A Teratological Pub Name

The other day in Stockport town centre, i noticed the curiously-named pub "The Swan With Two Necks". A quick google of the name reveals that there are several other pubs with that name in various places in England, seemingly centred around the Cheshire/Lancashire area (with outliers in Leeds and Staffordshire).

This intrigued me, as dicephalic (two-headed) vertebrates of many species have been documented - the commonest being snakes and turtles, but the condition (actually an extreme form of conjoined twins) has also been recorded in several mammal species, including cattle, sheep, cats and several human examples, the most famous (and the only one i know of to live to adulthood) being Abigail and Brittany Hensel. (In mammals, particularly cats, "two-headed" specimens are actually more often "two-faced" animals with craniofacial duplication, which are not "twins" and have a single brain; however, these lambs (as well as the Hensel twins of course) appear to be genuinely two-headed, with complete separate skulls and necks. Karl Shuker posts on "Janus cats" here, and on two-headed snakes here.)

However, i have never read a report of, or seen a photo of either a live or preserved specimen of, a two-headed bird. The double-headed eagle is a common heraldic symbol, and the Gandaberunda is a two-headed bird (of unspecified species, although the depictions of it i've seen look vaguely galliform to me) from Hindu mythology, but there is no evidence that either was inspired by real specimens of two-headed birds. There appears to be a report from 1894 of a two-headed partridge (unfortunately behind a paywall), and i vaguely remember a thread on a cryptozoology forum a few years ago about a possible sighting of a two-headed finch/sparrow/something similar in a US garden (with a blurry, inconclusive photo, and many people concluding the second "head" was actually some sort of abnormal feather growth producing a ball-shaped mass), but that's about all i've been able to find.

(There was also the spectacular fossil of a two-headed reptile found in 2006, which was erroneously called a "two-headed dinosaur" in some news stories, but was in fact a choristoderan, a fairly obscure group of extinct reptiles whose position in the greater reptile family tree is uncertain, but which are definitely not dinosaurs, avian or otherwise.)

Getting back to the pub name, this site claims that the origin of the pub name is not teratological, but comes from a tradition of marking ownership of swans by marking their bills and a corruption of "nicks" into "necks". This sounds a bit like one of those rather dodgy "folk etymologies" to me, but it does offer a possible explanation why it's "The Swan With Two Necks", as opposed to heads (which would seem to be the more obvious wording to describe a dicephalic animal, at least in English...)

The sign of "The Swan With Two Necks" in Stockport somewhat disappointingly features an "ordinary" (if somewhat tubby!), one-necked Mute Swan (Cygnus olor), which possibly favours the "nicks" theory for the name:



However, this sign looks relatively new, and there is also a stained-glass window on the front of the pub (presumably dating back to its original construction), which actually does show a two-necked (and -headed) swan, very much reminiscent of the Hyphalosaurus fossil:



(The one in Pendleton, Lancashire also seems to feature a dicephalic swan on its sign, as far as i can tell from this photo.)

So... could there ever have actually been a dicephalic swan? It seems unlikely that if dicephaly did ever occur in such a well-known species it would have gone unrecorded, considering the number of species it has been recorded in... but it doesn't seem theoretically impossible for such an animal to be born, given that the majority of the vertebrate species in which dicephaly has been recorded are egg-laying (although perhaps not with such solid eggs as those of a large bird). If dicephaly did occur in birds, one would expect it to have been documented in domestic chickens or ducks, and for this to be as common knowledge as it is in snakes, turtles, lambs, calves, etc. - so i'm inclined to conclude that the pub name is either a pun or derived from some historical fancy, rather than commemorating a genuine "Swan With Two Necks" that physically existed - but you never know...

Anyone know of any other pubs with teratological or cryptozoological names?

Greenshank or Marsh Sandpiper?

I saw and photographed this bird on April 2nd at Lymington in Hampshire. It's clearly a wader of the genus Tringa, which includes such species as the Redshank, Greenshank and various "sandpipers" (a generic term for any smallish, slim-built wader which encompasses species in many genera), but which one?



I posted the above pictures on BirdForum, saying:

Greenshank seems the nearest thing to this in my field guide, but i'm a bit uncertain because of the following:

a) the legs look grey rather than green

b) the field guide [The Hamlyn Guide to Birds of Britain and Europe, 1989 edition] describes Greenshank as "our largest and most robust Tringa". This bird was chased off by a Redshank, running right behind it, and looked just about exactly the same size, but if anything slimmer and more "fragile" looking (also slightly longer-necked and -legged, but my guess would be it weighed less than the Redshank).

When it flew away it had a very noticeable white rump and tail (looked all plain white, no visible barring, to me).

The other possible species suggested by people on BirdForum was Marsh Sandpiper, which is a fairly rare species in Britain, unlike the relatively commonplace Greenshank. However, the Redshank-sized bird i saw seems to fall awkwardly between Greenshank and Marsh Sandpiper in size (the Hamlyn Guide gives total length figures of 31cm for Greenshank, 27cm for Redshank and 23cm for Marsh Sandpiper).

There were lots of Redshanks about, which seemed fairly bold and aggressive, in contrast to this bird which seemed wary, timid and solitary.

I wasn't able to post my one photo with the "mystery Tringa sp." in the same frame as the Redshank on BirdForum because of their file size limits on attachments, but a BirdForum member called Pete Wragg sent me a message saying:

Hello,
I'm still not totally convinced this bird is not a Marsh Sandpiper.
Could you please e-mail me the picture with this bird and the Redshank in it.

Apologies to Pete for taking so long to respond, but here is the picture:


As you can see, the birds are at very different distances from the camera so a size comparison isn't particularly easy - however, i'll reiterate that when the Redshank chased the mystery bird off, they were beak to tail and looked very nearly exactly the same size, with the unidentified bird being perhaps a little taller and longer-necked than the Redshank, but making up for that with its slightly slenderer build.

After the responses my thought is that this bird was probably just a Greenshank at the small end of the species' size range (i'm assuming that birds, like people, do have "small", "medium" and "large" individuals within species, as i have observed in larger birds such as gulls and ducks), but it still seems like some doubt remains... any thoughts?

(edit: interestingly, not long after mine, there was another "Greenshank or Marsh Sandpiper?" ID debate on BirdForum here...)

Hilarious Wikipedia fail

The Wikipedia entry for Fiji Mermaid:

"Mermaids had been presented at shows for centuries. These were often people afflicted with dugong."

WARNING: VERY SILLY

More hybrid geese: various Canada x domestic types

Here are a few more probable Canada x Greylag/Domestic Goose hybrids, from various places around Greater Manchester...

(I'm not sure if such hybrids are particularly common in the Manchester area, or if i've just noticed them more since i've lived around here - the white one in the last post was the only hybrid goose i ever saw in 3 years in Birmingham, and these are all from the last 6 months. There do seem to be a lot more feral domestic (anser and/or cygnoides descended) geese around in Manchester though, whereas the few that i saw around Birmingham tended not to be on the same reservoirs/ponds/lakes/etc as the much-commoner-there Canadas.)





This one was at Etherow Country Park near Stockport. Notably, there were at least 3 distinct groups of geese on the reservoir it was on - Canadas, grey/brown domestic geese (most of which had some obvious Swan Goose ancestry, although they were probably mixed with Greylag over several generations), and some extremely large white domestic geese, which i believe were probably a "pure" domestic breed such as Embdens. (first pic below shows 2 of the Embdens, with a Swan Goose-type - which, for scale, is itself about the size of a typical Canada Goose, and the others 2 of the Swan Goose types...)




The hybrid seemed to be solitary, whether by choice or because it was rejected by the other groups of geese. (I'm still not actually certain this bird is part-Canada rather than just an unusual domestic Greylag x domestic Swan Goose cross, as its head and bill look pretty Greylag-like, but from discussions on Flickr and BirdForum, black tail feathers show Branta parentage, and Canada x domestic Swan Goose hybrids tend to have a lot of white on their heads/necks.)





This one, from Heaton Park, is similar but more obviously a Canada Goose hybrid. On the boating lake it was on there were families of both Canadas and wild-type Greylags with young goslings, and 2 "mixed" family groups that seemed to each consist of a pair of Canadas with goslings and a single Greylag with goslings of its own that had joined up with them - it wouldn't surprise me if the goslings in such mixed groups were likely to pair up with each other and produce hybrids in the future. There was also a large group of white/piebald domestic Greylags with somewhat older goslings. Note the pink legs and part orange, part pink bill.



This black-billed one from a boating lake in Stalybridge appears to be a Canada x domestic Swan Goose hybrid, according to the discussion in the Flickr "hybrid birds" photo-pool (see below).

In the "hybrid birds" pool on Flickr there are many more examples of Canada x dometic goose hybrids, which are very varied - these are subdivided into probable Canada x domestic Greylag, probable Canada x domestic Swan Goose, and probable Canada x domestic with both Greylag and Swan Goose ancestry, although i'm not sure how reliably distinguishable those categories actually are.

A few more good examples of Canada x Greylag/domestic goose hybrids can be seen here, here, here and here,.

More hybrid geese: white Canada x domestic, Birmingham

I first saw this goose in Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham in February 2008: as i was walking towards the lake near the Midlands Arts Centre, i saw a large male Mute Swan, wings puffed up in a huge threat posture, chase after and viciously attack an off-white goose, which then took off wildly honking, accompanied by a Canada Goose, and circled the lake several times calling loudly. I wonder whether the swan attacked that particular goose because of its colouring, which approximated that of a young Mute Swan at about the age when the parents would be driving them away from the next to live independently (mostly white, with some light greyish patches), or perhaps because it fell into some kind of swan version of the Uncanny Valley - just too similar too, yet too different from, a swan for the swan to feel disturbed or threatened by it in a way that it wasn't by the "normal" Canada geese...



After that incident, presumably the goose left Cannon Hill Park, but then in 2009, i saw the same bird at Swanshurst Park, a couple of miles away, accompanying a small group of Canada geese. While there were also resident swans at Swanshurst Park, they didn't seem bothered by the goose...






(while i'm not 100% sure this is the same bird, i believe it probably is: the difference in colour between the 2008 and 2009 photos is mostly due to the 2009 photos being taken with a better camera and less overexposed - the 2008 photo bleaches out the goose to look whiter than it is)

I wasn't sure at first whether this goose was actually a "half-Canada" or not - it was the same colour as lots of domestic geese of Greylag descent, but the pink (rather than orange) bill and legs, as well as the relatively Canada-like head and neck proportions (long, fairly thin neck, smallish head and much slimmer bill than most Greylag-types) led me to conclude that this individual must be a hybrid between a Canada and a white domestic goose.

Compare for example this very similarly coloured feral domestic Greylag-type (from Platt Fields Park in Manchester) - note the shorter, thicker neck, bigger head and much deeper, orange (not pink) bill:



Searching for online images, i also found these very similar white or mostly-white Canada/domestic hybrids:

Flickr 1
Flickr 2
Flickr 3
BirdForum 1
BirdForum 2
Harry Lehto
DV Info (the last 2 accompanied by "non-white" Canada/domestic hybrids that appear to have been their siblings)

showing that this isn't such a rare combination (although they are probably often mistaken for "ordinary" white domestic geese). One characteristic i've noticed about Canada x domestic goose hybrids is that they seem to either be solitary or attach themselves to groups of Canada geese, even if they are also domestic/Greylag geese around and they look more like domestic/Greylag geese than Canadas.

Next, some more "typical" looking (insomuch as such varied hybrids can be said to ever have a "typical" appearance) Canada x Greylag hybrids.

Hybrid geese at Boggart Hole Clough

At Boggart Hole Clough, on the Loiterers Resistance Movement's September day trip, i saw two geese that were obviously hybrids between the introduced Canada geese (Branta canadensis) and feral "barnyard" geese of Greylag Goose (Anser anser) descent. (The Greylag is the ancestor of most domestic geese, although some breeds also have ancestry from the Swan Goose (Anser cygnoides), which produces fully fertile hybrids with the Greylag. Hybrids between Anser geese and Branta geese, such as Canada x Greylag, are usually sterile.)







As can be seen, while these hybrids are most likely siblings originating from a single brood of eggs, they are very varied in appearance, with one bird taking more strongly after the Canada parent and the other taking more strongly after the Greylag, but both showing features clearly intermediate between the two.

The 2 hybrids were associating with a Canada and a large, grey and white domestic Greylag - presumably their parents (I have no idea which is the mother and which the father, or indeed how to determine the sex of geese in general, as unlike most ducks they seem not to show much, if any, obvious sexual dimorphism). I attempted to get a photo of all 4 together, but the light conditions somewhat defeated my camera, meaning that the best i could get was this:



(I didn't even notice the duck in the middle of the group when i took the photo, which is also a (sort-of) hybrid - a Manky Mallard, descended from interbreeding between wild Mallards and domestic ducks (both Anas platyrhynchos, so a similar situation to the wild Greylag and domestic goose)...)

The bleached-out white blur is a large, piebald domestic Greylag goose, very similar in appearance to this one (photographed at Platt Fields Park):



I have quite a few other photos of hybrid geese, which i will put in another post - the majority of other individuals of this (very variable) combination, but also a couple of much more unusual ones - watch this space...

The Turtle of Alexandra Park

On the Loiterers Resistance Movement trip to Boggart Hole Clough last weekend, i heard that there were supposedly "turtles" in the "boating lake" (really more of a duck pond) in Alexandra Park - so, the next time i happened to be nearby, i decided to go and have a look...

I wasn't really expecting to see anything, as i'd been there a few times previously to see what kind of birds frequented the "lake" (and once seen a Little Grebe, but otherwise only the usual Mallards, Coots, Moorhens, Mute Swans and Canada Geese), and was somewhat skeptical about the rumour anyway, but... after a half-circuit of the lake, i noticed a half-submerged log with a small roundish thing about halfway down it, got my binoculars out, and saw that, while pretty tiny (maybe 10cm total length), it was indisputably a turtle! It didn't seem to be moving very much, presumably basking in what was left of the sunlight (although it wasn't a particularly sunny day), but after going the rest of the way round the pond to see if there were any interesting birds or other turtles and returning to it, it had turned round to face the other direction.

Due to its small size and distance, and the light conditions, the photos i got of it were sadly somewhat blurred, but it is unmistakeably a turtle - these 2 were about the best ones:





One of the more blurred images, uncropped, with a duck in the picture to show scale:



There was also this log, which, while obviously pareidolia, did look rather like it could be mistaken for the head of a huge alligator or other lake monster:



While i only saw one small turtle, a local drunk did approach me unbidden while i was glancing at an information board detailing species of bird that could be seen there, firstly to tell me about the "little terns" that lived there, and then when i mentioned turtles to tell me a rather incoherent story of "snapper turtles" "big enough to take your hand off", and how he got cautioned by the police for "digging around in the mud trying to catch one for his little nephew"... so, who knows, something bigger might be in there...

(This isn't actually the first time that drunk people have approached me at park lakes to tell me about wildlife: around the time of the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, two Special Brew-drinking fishermen at Platt Fields Park told me about the "Icelandic geese" with "bright red beaks" that had "come over because of the volcano" - although the only geese there that i could see were the usual Greylags and Canadas...)

I'm not quite sure exactly what species of turtle this one is: presumably it's either a released pet or the descendant of one (while i have heard that it's too cold for turtles to reproduce in Britain, this one's small size did surprise me a bit, as the usual stories about turtles living in UK bodies of water are about pets that people released when they "got too big to keep"), so it would have to be a species commonly imported as a pet: possibly a Trachemys slider? (The Lord Geekington would probably be able to conclusively identify it...)

In any case, it's worth noting that if i hadn't heard the rumour about it, and therefore been looking for turtles, i almost certainly would have dismissed this turtle at a glance as just a roundish lump or stump on a log, and not have realised that any such thing lives in Alexandra Park - so all kinds of things can lurk right under people's noses, completely unnoticed...