Two juvenile swans who were rescued from Prospect Park after an apparent dog attack are back home after a lengthy stint at the Wild Bird Fund.
Looking almost good as new, the eight-month-old cygnets were returned to the park’s lake on Jan. 11, nearly a month after a group of volunteer wildlife observers called “The Swan Squad” brought them to the clinic with bloody head and eye wounds.
Both birds had suffered wounds to the right side of the head, said Rachel Frank, waterfowl director at the Wild Bird Fund, and both had developed infections by the time they were rescued about two days after the attack.
The larger swan, who rehabbers named Wazowski, was left with a large gash above the right eye and a fairly severe infection, Frank said. Wazowski was treated with antibiotics, and rehabbers had to debride the wound, suture it closed, then open it back up to debride it again later in the healing process.
Plankton, the smaller swan, had a smaller wound that was debrided and stitched, not sutured. The bird also had an ulcer on its eye, Frank said, which was treated twice-daily eyedrops.
Though no one saw the attack happen, Frank and the birds’ rescuers said the wounds are consistent with those caused by dogs. They believe the young swans were resting on land while the lake was largely frozen over when they were attacked by an off-leash dog.
By the end of their stay, the siblings were swimming together in the clinic’s small pool, relieving stress and building up their waterproofing as rehabbers continued to monitor their wounds and treat Plankton’s eye.
Though they recovered well, the birds’ time inside took a toll. They weren’t eating enough to maintain a healthy weight, despite being given appetite stimulants, Frank said.
“We were pretty happy with the trajectory of the wound healing,” Frank said. “They were not the happiest to be in captivity, so we did have to do some tube feeding of them, which is both stressful for us and stressful for them.”
On a slightly warmer-than-average day last weekend, rehabbers and the Swan Squad came together to bring the birds home to their family — parents Biggie and FM, the park’s resident swan couple, and their three siblings.
But things didn’t go exactly as planned.
When the siblings first entered the lake, everything seemed fine, said Mary Beth Artz, a member of the Swan Squad. But after about an hour, father swan Biggie started trying to drive the pair away.
“When they’re up in rehab for a really long time, and the time passes, it’s sometimes hard to reunite a family,” she said.
There were more natural issues at play, too. Mute swans typically stay with their parents until about late winter, at which point they are driven off so the parents can prepare for the next nesting season. Though Biggie and FM are still accepting their other three cygnets, all five will be ready to move on soon.
“So [Biggie is] on alert and trying to protect his territory, but he’s viewing his own offspring as intruders,” Artz said.
Mute swans can be very aggressive and have been known to drown other swans, Artz said, and both Plankton and Wazowski were a little weak after their time being rehabilitated.
“We observed, and we saw that it was getting a little aggressive and dangerous for them, so we decided to recapture and relocate them to the Boathouse area, where they would at least get a chance to have time to settle in and not be chased,” she said.
After a couple of days, Biggie and FM found and began to antagonize the siblings, but they were able to get up on land and find their own way to safety, Artz said. Since then, Plankton and Wazowski have kept a careful distance from their family, and the groups were existing relatively peacefully — carefully watched by the Swan Squad.
The pair will probably take off to find their own space relatively soon, Frank said, and are likely “so much happier” in the wild, despite their familial strife.
“But it seems like a good place for them to recover,” she said. “They have each other, they seem like they’re doing OK there.”
Frank said the cygnets probably won’t have any long-term effects from their injuries, but hoped they would be more wary of dogs.
“I guess I would hope that they have a healthy fear of dogs and people and can stay safe in the park,” she said.
Off-leash dogs are permitted in certain parts of Prospect Park between 9 p.m and 9 a.m., and are not allowed near the lake where the swans live. But many dog owners don’t abide by the rules, Artz said.
There were off-leash dogs running nearby even as the swans were released, she said, frustrating rescuers. Prospect Park’s wildlife deal with myriad human-caused issues, from dogs to abandoned fishing gear.
“All of this has made me become increasingly upset and disgusted that this didn’t have to happen because of the human activity that caused this,” she said. “The trickle down consequences are trauma for the birds, injuries, trauma for us, trauma for the caregivers, separation of family. It caused a lot, all because someone wanted to have their dog off-leash.”
