Swan gets schooling in the art of flying

Date Published: 10-Nov-2011

by Liam Corcoran 

A swan that recovered after being shot by a crossbow has made some unlikely friends at a city school in recent days.

The 18-month-old cygnet, who is just learning to fly, has taken to travelling from his home at the Claddagh to the pitches of St Mary’s College each morning.

“I thought at first that he might have been colour blind and mistaken the pitches for water,” said St Mary’s President Fr Barry Hogg.

“He sits out on the pitches and for all the world it looks like he thinks he’s on a lake.”

Fr Hogg added that some of the school’s students had been feeding porridge to the swan, who is “very friendly and approachable.”

Mary Joyce-Glynn of the Galway Swan Rescue Centre explained that the swan originally came from Dublin, where it had undergone life-saving surgery after being found shot by a crossbow in a public park last year.

Having recovered at the Galway charity’s centre at Lough Rusheen Park, the swan was released at the Claddagh at the end of July.

“He started to fly in the past two weeks and on the first day he ended up on the pitches at St Mary’s,” said Mary.

“When flying, a swan’s instinct is to get to open water, but this poor fellow just got lost on the way. After I returned him to the Claddagh the first day he just headed back to the same spot every day. He seemed to take a liking to the students and grounds,” she added.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.