PENRITH: A number of guests to the Lake District on Good Friday had the considerably uncommon expertise of watching six mute swans flying up the River Eamont in direction of Ullswater.
As they handed, solely a yard or two above the water, their wings made a speeding sound as of waves swishing on a shingly shore.
For the spectators it was a pleasing expertise to see the solar scintillating on the feathers of those lovely birds, however for the swans themselves the journey might have been the prelude to catastrophe.
For a few years previous swans from the River Eden and elsewhere have tried to make their house on the lake; however their transient tenure there has resulted in demise; for none has been capable of survive for quite a lot of months.
Lead poisoning – within the washings from the lead mines at Glenridding on the head of the lake – has been suspected as the reason for the mortality; and that famous Lakeland ornithologist the late Dr HJ Moon, a lot involved over the succession of deaths, despatched the interior organs of a lifeless swan for pathological examination, and traces of lead have been present in them.
Seemingly the poison adheres to the vegetation on which the swans largely feed. Lately steps have been taken to get rid of, or a minimum of scale back the toxic matter getting into the beck which discharges into the lake.
This article by John Harrison was first printed by The Guardian on 22 April 2024. Lead Picture: A swan beats its wings on the shore of Ullswater within the sunshine close to Glenridding within the Lake District. {Photograph}: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Photographs.
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