{"id":33736,"date":"2025-05-16T22:58:02","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T21:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=33736"},"modified":"2025-05-16T22:58:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T21:58:02","slug":"swan-numbers-rise-as-breeding-pair-disappears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=33736","title":{"rendered":"Swan Numbers Rise as Breeding Pair Disappears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag25\/2025051606.jpg\" \/><br \/>\nMore swans than usual gather near the Wilsham Road railing, where people throw bread to the birds. I counted ten today. Someone I spoke to had counted fifteen another day. In past years, a breeding pair drove others away, but they are absent this year. Without them, juvenile swans gather.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag25\/2025051601.jpg\" \/><br \/>\nI watched two moorhens with five chicks cross the river.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag25\/2025051603.jpg\" \/><br \/>\nThey passed in front of three swans. One swan tried to peck at a chick.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag25\/2025051604a.jpg\" \/><br \/>\nA moorhen flew at the swan and the swan thrashed away in surprise. The other moorhen led the chicks into cover.<\/p>\n<p>Without the breeding swan pair, the balance has changed this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More swans than usual gather near the Wilsham Road railing, where people throw bread to the birds. I counted ten today. Someone I spoke to had counted fifteen another day. In past years, a breeding pair drove others away, but they are absent this year. Without them, juvenile swans gather. I watched two moorhens with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}