Swan Whisperer’ banned from Hyde Park after residents objected to him kissing the birds

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Anders Fern­st­edt, 57, was known local­ly as ‘The Swan Whis­per­er’, and was filmed touch­ing and kiss­ing the crea­tures in the cen­tral Lon­don park.

Res­i­dent Vir­ginia Grey took the footage, while swan vol­un­teer Jon Fer­gu­son told Fern­st­edt to leave the birds alone because of an out­break of avian flu. 

Swedish man Fern­st­edt respond­ed by ram­ming Ms Grey with his bicy­cle, then attack­ing Mr Fer­gu­son when he tried to stop him, dur­ing the inci­dent in 2023.

Fern­st­edt denied a charge of assault occa­sion­ing actu­al bod­i­ly harm, but was con­vict­ed by a jury at South­wark Crown Court on Thurs­day

He was sen­tenced to a 15 month com­mu­ni­ty order and a 15 day reha­bil­i­ta­tion activ­i­ty require­ment by judge Recorder David Ether­ing­ton, KC.

Fern­st­edt was well-known around London’s so-called bil­lion­aires’ row in Knights­bridge, where he had pitched up in a door­way with a bed, plants and books.

Dur­ing the tri­al at South­wark Crown Court, the court heard he enjoyed gifts includ­ing design­er clothes and a £5,000 Fort­num and Mason ham­per from res­i­dents of the wealthy west Lon­don neigh­bor­hood. 

He became home­less in 2023 after he was evict­ed from the house he was liv­ing in when it was sold. 

Fern­st­edt, who had no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions, rep­re­sent­ed him­self in court with his long hair tied up in a bun and sport­ing a long grey beard, while wear­ing a navy suit with a pur­ple tie.

The judge also passed a restrain­ing order pre­vent­ing Fern­st­edt from going into Kens­ing­ton Gar­dens in Hyde Park, or con­tact­ing Mr Fer­gu­son or Ms Grey, for two years.

The judge said: ‘There were clear­ly issues with the swan pop­u­la­tion due to an out­break of avian flu and Mr Fer­gu­son had warned you about touch­ing the swans and you ignored him sev­er­al times and enticed the swans out of the water with food.

You have beliefs about inter­act­ing with and touch­ing swans and show­ing them to tourists to under­stand the bird pop­u­la­tion.

‘The sad thing is all three of you have an inter­est in the wel­fare of birds but dif­fer­ent views about how this should be achieved.’

When Ms Grey was film­ing him touch­ing the swans, Fern­st­edt ‘clear­ly moved for­ward and rammed your bicy­cle into Mrs Grey, caus­ing her to fall over, the judge added.

Mr Ferguson’s attempts to appre­hend Fern­st­edt led to a ‘tus­sle’ on the ground which left the swan vol­un­teer need­ing stitch­es to his mouth.

The judge said: ‘I find you to be an eccen­tric man but not suf­fer­ing from an under­ly­ing men­tal ill­ness.’

He added: ‘Just because peo­ple are intel­li­gent it doesn’t mean they’re always wise.

‘You are obvi­ous­ly an intel­li­gent man, you clear­ly have had a respon­si­ble work his­to­ry and it is unfor­tu­nate that seems to have gone away.’

Dur­ing cross exam­i­na­tion, Ms Grey even cast doubt on Fernstedt’s con­nec­tion with the swans, say­ing that they would ‘go to any­body who has food… It is not because they think you are fan­tas­tic’.

But you stroke them, you cud­dle them, you kiss them, you pick them up. That is inter­fer­ing with wildlife, and dis­turb­ing them. It is not nat­ur­al