A black swan has been removed from Stratford-Upon-Avon after it became aggressive with the area’s famous local mute swans.
The bird, named by locals as Reggie and nicknamed “Mr Terminator”, was captured by swan warden Cyril Bennis on Tuesday and is now being held in a local park before he will be moved on to the Dawlish Waterfowl Centre in Devon.
Mr Bennis, who has volunteered as Stratford-Upon-Avon’s swan warden for 45 years, said that when Mr Terminator first came to the town nine months ago, residents found it “very exciting to have a black swan appear”. The black swan, not native to British rivers, was “so regal in many respects”.
“However, for some reason, this fellow – Mr Terminator, as I called him – decided that this is quite a nice place, so during the winter months it was lovely to see.”
As word travelled about the black swan, “everybody fell in love with him,” according to Mr Bennis, who said there was “no doubt about it, he became more popular than William Shakespeare himself”.
“Everyone was coming to Stratford to see the black swan. On the one hand, it was great. On the other hand, it caused a bit of nervousness in a sense, because we didn’t want it to settle in and we didn’t want it to get too familiar with our mute swans.”
Stratford-Upon-Avon is home to a flock of around 60 mute swans, famous for their S-shaped neck and orange bill with a black base and a black bump.
“We didn’t want any hanky pankies or integration going on with regards to the mute swan,” Mr Bennis added. But after a few months, Mr Terminator showed another side.
“The darkest side of our Mr Terminator happened when he started to muscle in on a pair of our residents with a young cygnet and then things got a bit nasty … He kicked out the male and the cygnet. He tried to take over its territory with the other female.”
Mr Terminator then started trying to drown and get aggressive with the mute swans. The swan warden said he was reluctant to remove the black swan, saying, “I was going to be damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.
“It needed to move on,” he said. The process of removing the black swan wasn’t easy,” said Mr Bennis, who is still recovering as his chest remains “a little bit sore”, but he managed to calm down the bird and bag him up into a holding area.
Mr Bennis said that things were now “hunky dory” as Mr Terminator is set to be sent to Devon.
“Today the river is quiet and [the mute swans] are just relaxing,” he said. “It’s like a play out of Shakespeare, things are calm and it’s just settling down.
“I’m sure His Majesty the King will be very pleased now that we got one rogue black swan out of the way of our mute swans.”
Black swans are a large waterbird native to Australia.
