Anger as ‘lowlife’ kills and dumps black swans in Cameron Park

Craig Linsley, who lives in Cameron Park, found the dead waterbirds while walking with his 11-year-old daughter Scarlet on Monday.

“Some lowlife has killed them and just left them there,” Mr Linsley said.

“It looked like their necks were broken. There isn’t any pond nearby where they would have come from.”

The manner in which the swans were left almost identically by the footpath suggested they hadn’t simply been hit by a car, he said.

Alan Stuart, vice president of the Hunter Bird Observers Club, said the dead swans were both adults and probably a breeding pair.

“If they’ve been dumped there, it’s just mind-boggling that anyone would do that,” Mr Stuart said.

“They are aggressive and defend their nests and their young, and that could be the background – that someone didn’t like having them being aggressive near their property or near their dog.”

Mr Stuart said that black swans had been known to fly into windows and die of their injuries, but almost never as a pair.

“It’s likely that for some reason somebody’s killed them, which is terrible,” he said.

“Hopefully they get caught and hopefully they have a guilty conscience forever.”

Black swans are legally protected in NSW, though they are classified among the threatened species of least concern.

The birds are monogamous breeders, meaning that each breeding pair stays together for life and shares incubation and cygnet rearing between them.

In previous instances of people killing black swans in suburban parks and ponds, the loss of an adult has led to the loss of an entire family.

“Swans are protected wildlife and it is an offence to harm them,” Lawrence Orel, of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, said. 

“Penalties of up to $3300 or six months’ jail apply to anyone convicted of harming protected fauna.

Anyone with any information should report suspected incidents to their nearest National Parks office.”