Swan ditches plastic lover - Update

They made an unlikely couple - Petra the graceful black swan and the plastic pedal boat she followed around a lake in the north of Germany.

But after nearly two years the bond of affection appears to have broken and lovestruck bird has turned her back on the swan-shaped white pedalo for someone else.

For the past week Petra has been swanning around with a new companion - one of the feathered kind.



"They swim together and eat together. They are virtually inseparable," said Joerg Adler, director of the zoo in Muenster, where the pair are spending the winter.

No one is more surprised at this development than Adler, who has looked after Petra and her plastic heartthrob for the past two winters when they move to the zoo from a city lake called Aasee.

But nevertheless a question-mark hangs over Petra's new partnership. It is still not clear whether her new paramour is a male or a female. You can't really tell in mute swans of this age," said Adler.