One of the Queen’s more ancient and obscure functions as Seigneur is to protect and nurture all the graceful mute swans on open water and, if she wishes, select for herself alone those that she would like to place on her banqueting table. In medieval times, when Britain’s largest breeding bird was a delicacy less admired for its albescent beauty than coveted as a culinary treat, swans were frequently barbecued by the rude peasantry. To preserve cygnus olor for the royal palate and its down for plumping the royal mattress, the Crown claimed ownership, and towards the end of the 15th century deputed two London livery companies, the Vintners and the Dyers, to carry out an annual census. Thus began the quaint summer ceremony of “swan-upping”, when a flotilla of barges manned by rivermen in scarlet, blue and white attempts to scoop up all the squawking cygnets between Sunbury and Pangbourne and place rings of royal ownership around their legs.
The tradition, like so many where purpose has given way to pageantry, has become part of Merrie England. But it has also achieved a serious ornithological objective: saving the species from the depredations of man, and especially from poisoning by anglers’ lead weights. Success, however, has led to a population boom. Last year the Queen’s Swan Marker counted 875 swans on the Thames, an increase of 3 per cent. There are now so many gliding along the chalk rivers of southern England that they are gobbling up their favourite riverweed — ranunculus — at an alarming rate. Without the weed to keep them hidden beside the banks, brown trout do not flourish. And with fewer trout to fish, Britain’s anglers are casting around for someone to blame. The swans, they insist, are the villains.
The angry anglers want a cull. Nothing as crude as shooting, of course: no minister could risk imprisonment in the Tower for such lese-majesty. But there are calls to cover the swans’ eggs in paraffin oil, which apparently severely reduces the maternal instinct to sit on them, or pricking selected eggs in selected nests. It would take a brave man to carry out such infanticide. Although few instances show up in hospital statistics, every angler knows that a grown swan having a hissy fit can break a man’s leg.
The answer would be to make the swans less welcome. Already they are having to compete for river space with black swans and other aliens from Russia. Should we not drop our reverence for the bird: change the pub names, ban Tchaikovsky’s ballet, call Shakespeare by another nickname? Indeed, what about a few more palace banquets? That should reduce the supply and introduce a merry note to dreary state dinners.