Florida city sells excess swans after Queen Elizabeth's gift leads to overpopulation

A Florida city has sold off three dozen swans to ease an overpopulation crisis.

Lakeland’s signature swans swamped the city, more than 60 years after Queen Elizabeth II gifted it a pair of the birds.

Lakeland, situated just east of Tampa, has a swan as its symbol.

In the 1950s, a Lakeland native living in England wrote to the monarch asking if she could help, after the flock which had been living there was devoured by alligators and dogs.

A sympathetic Queen Elizabeth sent two royal swans from her own flock, and they arrived on 7 February 1957.