Napanee wildlife centre says swan needs surgery to survive

Sandy Pines Wildlife Centre in Napanee is currently rehabilitating two male and one female mute swans to return to the wild.

The female is going to need surgery, and while she looks healthy now, biologist Tess Miller says that wasn’t the case a little over a week ago.

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“She was flat out, she was very skinny, she was emaciated,” she said. “An average adult female mute swan would weigh about eight kilograms — she weighs five kilograms.”

Miller says they quickly identified the problem with an X-ray; a barbed fishing hook is lodged in the bird’s esophagus.

There’s also a lead sinker lodged in the esophagus near the animal’s head.

Miller says lead sinkers are a big problem for waterfowl.

“That lead gives them lead poisoning and then it just starts to go downhill from there. They can’t eat, organs start to shut down, those kinds of things.”

Eventually, the bird would die if untreated.

Staff say they hope to operate on the female mute swan either this weekend or early next week, and Miller says they’re confident they can get both the hook and the sinker out in one go.

“[They will] likely do a little keyhole surgery, remove that hook, hopefully, it’s attached to the sinker with the fishing line — it looks like it is so that she can take the whole thing out.”

Staff are also having to be inventive in housing the three swans they are caring for, according to veterinary assistant Julia Evoy. “One’s even in our staff washroom at the moment because we don’t have any facilities outside.”

Sandy Pines Wildlife Centre is fundraising to rebuild a barn that burned down in January.

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Evoy says they’ve been lucky it’s been a mild winter and they haven’t had to care for many swans this year.

“Many years ago, we had about 30 swans in, and the barn was completely full at that point, so if we would have had a busy winter with everything frozen over, we would have been in trouble for sure.”

It is expected the female mute swan will take four to six weeks to recover from surgery before she’s released into the wild.