The biggest, brightest, bird on the river is doing in a very public place what most others risk only in private. When we cross the well-used footbridge we need only peep through the railings to look down on the swan at her nest, out in full view on the riverbank below.
A few days ago I saw her get up and waddle half a dozen steps to the water’s edge for a spot of “gardening”, dabbing at sticking up shoots, leaving her precious clutch exposed in the middle of her nest, a lifebuoy-rimmed bowl of dead stems.
It felt like an illicit pleasure to eye up eight real, live, enormous pale eggs nestling together. I thought of the supermarket and wondered if, at 11cm long, they would pass on the shelves as XXL.
When I next looked she was brooding again, her body still, her head stretching to reach for longer vegetation. Her neck was alternately flexing and retracting, a vacuum cleaner hose with attitude. Evidently, she was trying to build up her nest. She was tugging out straggly pieces of weed, and either jabbing them into the front wall, or trailing them sinuously over her body, to plaster them in to the other side.
Her mate was in close attendance, gathering fresh nest material, thrusting his beak into waterside plants, disentangling withered, dry, growth and placing it into one heap on one side, and then, with meticulous care, into a second heap on the other.
Every so often, the male swan would stop and stare, his neck in a slow swivel, checking his mate, casting round.
Her repair work done, the female suddenly rose, flashing the eggs beneath her. Curling her neck under her body she began to nuzzle at the eggs with her bill, deftly scooping them and turning them over. Seemingly content she lowered her body again.
Drawing her head over her back she snuggled it into the feathers lying between her folded wings. Her one visible eye to me closed.
She has two or three more weeks under the gaze of curious humans, but it would seem she doesn’t really mind us.
Derek Niemann @DerekNiemann
