Rochester’s Turning Point Park contains a lovely 1/2 mile pedestrian boardwalk that traverses a shallow, reedy portion of a wide bend in the Genesee River. At any remotely warm time of year, faunae of all different sorts can be seen frolicking about. I’ve seen beavers, turtles, finches, hawks, ducks, geese, and swans. But I’ve never seen anything like what happened on Thursday, April 14th, 2011.
As soon as we arrived on the boardwalk, a large swan made a dramatic landing in the river right next to us. He fanned his wings out wide to slow down quickly, and used his skidding feet to slow the landing. He quickly swam over and checked us out. Here’s a photo of the lovely fellow:
This lovely birdie proceeded to follow us down the length of the entire boardwalk. I mean, he stopped when we chatted with friends and passersby. He flew to catch up if we walked too far ahead. For about an hour, he followed us all up and down the boardwalk with no tangible purpose other than his own amusement.
Some friends advised us that a swan nest was visible right off the walkway down toward Lake Ontario. We walked down to the next set of reeds, and look what we found!
This Mama Swan was carefully picking through the reeds to find long flexible pieces to add to her substantial nest.
Unfortunately, our swan companion caught the attention of Papa Swan, who did this crazy running-on-the-water while flapping maneuver to come over and bash our friend. The two fought an epic swan battle royale for several minutes, and continued to posture at one another until we finally led our swan away.
This was the most remarkable interaction I’ve ever had with swans. Until next week, anyways, when we go back to get some photos of the little fluffy cygnets 
