Rare Black Swan Gets Evicted From Small Town After Attempting to Drown Local Birds
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NEED TO KNOW
- A rare black swan named Reggie became a nuisance for a small English town
- Locals claim the swan, nicknamed “Mr. Terminator,” began attacking local swans, even the young ones
- The town’s swan warden assisted in getting Reggie moved to a neighboring location
A black swan has been removed from an English town after clashing with its iconic mute swans.
According to a report from The Independent, the bird, named Reggie, has been a nuisance to the locals of Stratford-Upon-Avon for about nine months. He was captured on the River Avon on Tuesday, Sept. 30.
Swan warden Cyril Bennis, who has cared for the town’s flock of mute swans for 45 years, told the outlet that the residents were thrilled at first to see Reggie, noting that he looked “so regal in many respects.”
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Bennis also shared with the outlet that visitors would flock to see the bird — he “became more popular than William Shakespeare himself,” the swan expert shared — but his but his presence raised worries about how he might interact with Stratford’s 60 swans.
“We didn’t want any hanky pankies or integration going on with regards to the mute swan,” Bennis explained to the publication.
Those concerns became reality when Reggie began attacking the resident flock. He soon earned the nickname “Mr. Terminator.”
“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,” Bennis told The Independent. “He kicked out the male and the cygnet. He tried to take over its territory with the other female.”
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As the aggression escalated, Bennis made the difficult decision to remove the bird.
“I was going to be damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. It needed to move on,” Bennis explained. He also shared that capturing Reggie left him “a little bit sore,” but he was relieved it was over.
Mr. Terminator is being held in a local park before transferring to the Dawlish Waterfowl Centre in Devon.
“Today the river is quiet and [the mute swans] are just relaxing,” Bennis told The Independent. “It’s like a play out of Shakespeare, things are calm and it’s just settling down.”
“He’s terrorised everyone else but we love him so it will be sad to see him go,” a resident told the BBC. “But it’s probably better for the river that he’s gone.”
Credit to Nypost AND Peoples
