Out for an early morning run today; blue sky, a cool breeze, the air scented with rose and honeysuckle, house martins swooping along the foreshore; I remembered the swans and wondered what had happened to them. They came gliding by a couple of weeks ago, their new brood of five cygnets in tow, and haven't been seen since.
This local pair of swans nest in a sheltered cove alongside Hythe Marina and have marked the entire stretch of water between the marina, the end of the pier and the foreshore, as their own; jealously guarding the territory and regularly chasing off any swan interlopers. They've nested in the same spot for the past few years and have successfully produced a brood of some five or six cygnets each year, but that's as far as it goes. Last year they sailed back and forth, with five cygnets, every day for a week, the following week there were three and the next day there were none. The year before, they started with a brood of six and each time they went by there was one less, until one day there were none. I don't recall what happened the year before that, but you get the drift...
The picture shows one of the Hythe swans and the five cygnets, off Hythe foreshore, Southampton Water, Hampshire, at 06:30 on Tuesday 29th May 2012. And this may have been the first, and last, sighting....
Click on the link below to find out more about mute swans.
