I've just been watching Bill Oddie and Kate Humble's Autumnwatch from the other night (courtesy of Mr Fink's latest gadget - Skyplus - Mr Fink is a uber-gadget guy).
Anyway, I was watching the segment where Ms Humble was trying to tag Whooper swans.
I'll set the scene - Kate was togged up in chest high waders, holding an 8ft long pole with a fierce swan hook on the end.
Kate and her 6 or 7 male swan catchers were wading through chest-high reeds herding the family of swans ready for capture. One by one the swans were chased down, caught by the neck on the big hooks, trussed up and put in swan bags. Once all had been captured, the scientists proceeded to find out what sex the birds were, measure the beak length with calipers, wrap the birds up in tarpaulins and weigh them, put rings on each leg and lastly, take a picture of the birds unique beak pattern. Then they released the birds back into the wild.
It suddenly occurred to me. Can you imagine these birds later on in the day, meeting up with their swan mates...
"Blimey, you'll never guess what happened to me today. I was abducted by aliens, they did medical experiments on me, probed and prodded me, recorded me and put me back in the marsh."
Swan friend replies, "Yeah yeah Nigel, of course you were, we believe you." All the other swans have a really big laugh at Nigel's expense and Nigel spends months in Swan psychotherapy, only to be accidentally captured off the coast of Greenland by the Goosewatch Team a year later.
He is never the same again.
