A 'VAGRANT' mute swan is making headlines in India.
Is the bird that has turned up at the Dhinchada Lake in Jamnagar, Gujarat, truly a wilding? Or is it an escape from a zoo or private waterfowl collection?
If the former, it is believed to be the first authentic record of the mute swan in India since 1911.
However, Dr R Suresh Kumar, an authority on avian migration from the Wildlife Institute Of India in Dehradun, has his doubts.
According to a report in the English-language daily newspaper, the Hindustan Times, he reckons it "does not seem plausible" for a mute swan to migrate to Gujarat because it is too far south of the species' geographic range.
It might be more feasible were the bird to have been seen at the foot of mountains in the north of the country where wild swans are occasionally driven by outbreaks of severe weather in northern latitudes.
However, many twitchers have made the trip to see the “rarest of rare wild migrants" just in case.
Says the Times reporter Vikram Jit Singh: "Wildlife photographers are currently going gung ho."
Before the provenance of the bird is determined, he says there will need to be "a behavioural assessment of its relative degree of reticence, vis-a-vis humans".
The reporter adds: " Interestingly, not a single photo or video of the Jamnagar swan in flight has been put up by the army of long lenses, though one would expect that a swan which has supposedly flown thousands of miles in migration would be testing its wings regularly."
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