Swans breaking people's arm myth

I wonder what you make of the swan able to break an person's arm with its wing myth? I keep hearing about it ever since I started to do research on swans and there seem to be no real cases on it and it sounds like a myth. Not sure were that idea came from.

as a person who has fought swans on two occasions, i believe they can't break your arm. but they will chase you and when they start honking and flapping their wings they could be intimidating to people surprised and unprepared.

since i couldn't live with myself if i got beaten up by a swan, i defended my self. instead of running for dear life like i have seen people do, i took the offensive by guile and timing.

the trick is to stand your ground and time your kick right before it jumps at you. you should hear a hollow thump. and the bird should be stunned. your stance should also be like a punter or field goal kicker about to kick off the game.

then its you whose chasing the swan. also be prepared for a park full of people to curse and yell and threaten to call the police.

i also had experiences with dive bombing red winged blackbirds. since they dive bomb at all angles, they are hard to defend against.

unless you happen to have a tennis racquet like i did that day.

Never saw one break and arm, but they have spurs on the front of the wings. I helped ban some in N. MI. The guy doing the banding was struck in the face as we were subduing a big male, tore a hole through his cheek and into his mouth, needed stitching inside and our, be careful of this.

reply to post by sailormon

I didn't know they had spurs in their wings. How big are the spurs, how sharp and what species of swan you saw that had spurs? A while back, I read about screamers and they have good size spurs in their wings. I been hit in the face by a wing of a pigeon and that hurts. I also had my share of experiences with geese and got my lip busted by a wing from goose. People try to claim geese can break people's arm and I don't believe that. I experience geese enough to know about how strong they are, but I no experience with swans at all. It is cool you did banding, I always wanted to do that.

reply to post by randomname

That is going to be very hard for me to do, because I stand at 5 feet tall and male mute swan is almost stands close to 4 feet. That is going to look big and scary. I can't of figure it be impossible for them to break someone's arm. Maybe it is more plausible it could break one of the fingers if it hit hard enough and just right. Did the swan end up hitting you or did it stay its distance?

never heard the myth but swans are agressive animals, and they can kill People (most unlikely at main land)
theres been storys of badly injured people getting attacked by swans.

reply to post by Psychedelica


How on earth did the swan kill people? I know swans can hurt people, I saw a swan a couple of weeks ago.