Animals: Expert on frozen swan: rescue “highly dangerous”

When the bird is free, you can see in the video how one of the two takes the swan in his arms and carries it across the ice to the mainland. By midday on Wednesday, the video, which begins with the words “Risky rescue operation on the Landwehr Canal in Berlin,” had received more than 60,000 likes.

Why this is dangerous

According to Ehlert, the action is dangerous for two reasons. On the one hand, the inflatable boat could burst open on the edge of the ice, putting the rescuers in danger. On the other hand, the animal should not be touched directly because you don’t know whether it is sick. Bird flu, which killed thousands of birds last fall, still exists.

Nevertheless, the commitment of the two should be praised, said Ehlert. “They really wanted to help,” he said. It was correct that they first waited half a day to observe the situation, as it could well be that the animal was not frozen solid at all.

The fire brigade alerted the water police

The Berlin fire department was alerted to rescue the animal, a spokesman said. However, the bird was about 50 meters from the bank. Without a boat, the emergency services would not have been able to reach the animal safely. The emergency services therefore called the water police. When they arrived, the two passers-by had already freed the swan, said the spokesman. The emergency services received the bird and took it to an animal clinic.

According to the wildlife expert, most water birds do not freeze on the ice because their legs and feet are kept at a lower temperature and therefore cannot freeze. The mute swan, to which the bird in this case belongs, is one of the few bird species where this is possible in rare cases. The species originally comes from Southeast Asia, where there is no frost.

This doesn’t happen to the swans native to Germany. They are used to ice and frost, which is why they move much more than mute swans and can freely peck at ice edges in the water with their beaks.

What you should do in such a situation

Ehlert advised turning to experts who could provide help in such situations. In Berlin he recommended calling the “Wildtiernah Berlin” network and asking for help. The network is coordinated by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research and supported by the Senate Department for the Environment. Otherwise, the veterinary offices are also contacts in such cases.