When a Whooper Swan flew over my head on Warneford Meadow, Oxford on 12th November 2022, I wrote it off as a freakish one-off, an incredible record, never to be repeated. What right does a small urban, inland patch, with no standing water, have to record Whooper Swan? Whoopers are pretty rare in Oxfordshire, with a small number of records in winter.
Then, on Wednesday morning, the unthinkable happened. I had just left Warneford Meadow and was crossing the golf course, when I heard what appeared to be a distant honking call. I stopped in my tracks. My first instinct was that it may have been a calling goose. This was good news. We don’t get many waterbirds up here, I haven’t recorded Greylay Goose in over 18 months and there has only been one record of Canada Goose this year. I stared at the line of pine trees on the horizon, from where the sound originated.
Then I heard more calls. Simultaneously, as the thought “Whooper Swans?” formed in my mind, my jaw began to drop. Seconds later, four huge, gleaming white swans broke the skyline, their calls echoing over the golf course. It was true, I was in the presence of Whoopers:
The ten seconds that it took the 4 Whooper Swans to fly over my patch, over the Churchill Hospital and away over Headington, were blissful. I took pictures and even made a late effort to record their calls, unsuccessfully unfortunately, as I had prioritised getting some photographs. With only four records of Mute Swan here in six years, there are now two records of Whooper Swan, making Mute Swan only twice as likely as Whooper Swan here! My overriding memory though, will be the sounds of wild swan calls, ringing out over my patch, just magical.