Hello,
I have read with great interest some of the questions and answers on your web site.

A friend of mine has a little house near a village on the banks of the Seine river. The river is relatively clean in this spot and there are houses about every 50 yards or so, set well back from the water. The "bank" is a low reinforced concrete wall in most places, and the water at the edge of the river is about 3 feet deep most of the time. On the other side of the river there is a public park, also with a low concrete wall. There are several places for boat launches on both sides of the river, where a swan could walk out on land to get food, but there aren't really any places where they could feed without leaving the water. There are mute swans and various kinds of ducks living in the area.

The house next to my friends' is abandoned and the garden is overgrown all the way down to the boat launch. A pair of mute swans built a nest there and a few weeks ago, a fox or dog killed the female while she was sitting on the nest. She was found dead with her throat slashed and I don't know what happened to the cygnets. The male is now acting kind of lost and hanging around the overgrown garden and my friend's place. He doesn't come out of the water at my friend's (the wall may be too high for him) but he does come around in the early evening, swimming close to the wall and acting as if he is starving (although physically he appears to be in good health.) When we throw him bread he just gobbles it up and even reaches his head right up to our hands to try to snatch it away before we can tear it into little pieces.

So my question is : should we feed him ? I am worried he will become too dependent on humans, and the house is only used on weekends, which would be very bad for him in the winter. Also, bread doesn't seem adequate for a great big beast like him ; shouldn't he be eating fish or insects as well ? Is he just going through a period of mourning, and will he eventually fend for himself again (as he must have done in the past) ?

Thanks very much in advance for your advice.

Best regards,
Ann
Paris, France