Last Thursday, Valentine’s Day, we tried to release a juvenile mute swan onto a private lake in the south of the island.

The lake is inhabited by a single female mute swan and we hoped, albeit anthropomorphically, that love would be in the air and that the two swans would get on with each other, or at least tolerate each other’s company.

But alas, the female swan was not prepared to share her lake with a new-comer, even a young and unthreatening one, and (not to put too fine a point on it) she tried to drown him.

So, we rather unceremoniously had to remove him from the water and return him to our aviary, with the only injury being to his pride.

The juvenile swan originally came from the Eairy Dam, just next to Ard Jerkyll, two weeks ago.

The mild spring has probably incentivised his parents to start planning their next brood, and so they seemed relatively unconcerned that he had started to wander off in search of food.

Worryingly, though, he started to cross roads and there was a real danger that he would be run over by a passing vehicle.

We try not to interfere with nature if we can avoid it and so we popped him back into the dam a couple of times, but in the end we had no choice but to bring him into the aviary.

The search is now on for a suitable location in which to release him, somewhere where he will be watched over and fed daily.

His new home needs to be well away from roads, and it can’t already be inhabited by a pair of swans because, as a bonded pair, they will chase him away.

Even a lone swan, as we have experienced, can be very territorial and so it may well be that he needs to be the only swan in his new home until he’s mature enough to attract a mate. Despite their name, mute swans can be very noisy and being vocal will be one of the ways in which he’ll draw attention to himself.

He may well leave the Isle of Man in search of a mate - studies of ringed swans have shown Manx birds travelling to England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Most people will know that mute swans generally pair-up for life.

This is done for entirely practical, rather than romantic, reasons because the bonded pair will raise clutch after clutch of cygnets in their lifetimes, learning from their successes and failures each time.

Swan couples are also highly effective fighting teams.

If they are separated swans of either sex get threatened more frequently, and come off less well in aggressive encounters.

Females also eat less when separated from their mates. By sticking together, they protect themselves and stay healthier.

When our juvenile eventually becomes a father, unlike most ducks and geese, he will help to incubate his eggs, allowing his mate to feed more and rebuild the fat reserves she used up in laying them.

Once the cygnets hatch he will help to look after them for between six and nine months by protecting them from predators and finding food sources.

Some of these food sources may well be provided by humans, and so it’s worth reminding bird-lovers not to ’ban the bread’ at this time of year.

Our local swans, ducks and geese all need the extra calories that bread provides them with when it’s cold, although once the weather is warmer feeding should be restricted to bird seed.