Hatching Up New Residents In Long Beach

At the end of March, Eric Marghella peered down his dock at the end of the Sarazen Canal and saw what he expected: the makings of a swan’s nest.

Two swans returned to claim Marghella's jet ski ramp as their nesting area, the exact spot where they nested and raised a family for the first time last year. 

"Last year everyone told us that swans mate for life, and that they would continue to come back to our dock,” Marghella said. "… And now it looks like this is something we're going to be looking forward to every year now." 

On any given day, people hover over the wooden railing at the canal, at East Chester Street and Boyd Street, to toss bits of bread in the water and check on the swans’ activity. 

But, with a typical nesting period of six to eight weeks, area watchers have visited more hoping to catch the birth of the six cygnets, the eggs of which they've watched the mother swan nest on for weeks.   

Canal residents Jeanne Zucker and Mike Connors went to see the swans everyday last year, and now return in anticipation of seeing them become parents all over again. 

"It was a very big thing on the street," Zucker said, who lives a block from the canal. "It was great to watch the progression of the nesting.  We took tons of pictures when the babies were born." 

Marghella and his fiance, Diane Bernstein, greatly enjoyed watching the cygnets hatch last year.  The couple watched the cygnets take their first steps and the male swan aid the runt of the litter that had difficulty swimming. They observed the swans, along with their five younglings, return to sleep at the end of their dock every night, even after the nest was gone. 

Marghella feels a sense of responsibility to protect the family and roped off the dock to prevent people from walking toward the nest.

“I try and watch over them when people come to visit,” he said. “I actually caught some kids who were walking home from school stopping to throw rocks at them. I came out and told them that this was an amazing thing that's happening and they needed to protect it." 

This protection of the swans doesn’t end with Marghella and his fiancé. The couple jokingly refer to two neighbors who monitor visitors from their windows and porches as “mom of the swans.” One of them even posted a sign last year that kindly asked viewers to refrain from feeding the swans, after she researched that swans were supposed to eat underwater vegetation.

And as for Marghella's inaccessible jet skies, he's not worried about it. "It's perfect timing," Marghella stated.  "It's to cold to go out right now anyway."

He is already anticipating next year’s return by planning to mount a video camera to his dock to record the swans’ activities, and may even hold a naming ceremony for the swans and the cygnets once they are born.