A friend was driving me back from new year's boardgames and on the way we've encountered a swan strolling on the roadway of a bridge. (The swan was alone, appeared completely fine, and was AFAICT fully adult: its body was ~1m tall, its head was at ~1.5m and its plumage was fully white.)
I was surprised in many ways:
- did the swan walk there or land there?
- is there some obvious reason why a swan would want to be on a bridge (my friend's hypothesis was that that swan might have been doing that semi-regularly and just been surprised by ~nonzero traffic at that time of night there)?
- do swans stroll? I don't recall seeing a swan more than a few meters away from water (other than a flying one).