On a snow-flecked night over the holidays, I slipped down to the river and paused on the bridge. Floating a little upstream were two brilliant white coracles: sleeping swans, each with its beak folded away in the well between its wings. Anchorless and rudderless, did they lay their heads on feather beds under the weir, in the dreamy expectation that they would wake at dawn in the mill pool? Some overnight sleeper.
Only two swans. The last time I was here, there had been more – a whole family. It is the harshest, most necessary part of a territorial bird’s life that there should come a time when they drive away the young they so diligently nurtured. These birds had given theirs a Christmas present of solitude and self-reliance, and themselves the space to breed again.
Some days later, and from a bridge half a mile further along the river, I spied what I took to be one of their offspring in the distance, slender-necked and goose-grey. Eventually, after some tracking down the bank on my part, we met face to face. We were convivially close, just two metres apart, two metres of surging river engorged by recent rains. The swan held its position.
I cast a lingering glance over sooty plumage that looked as if another heavy shower might wash it white. I couldn’t help staring at its juvenile beak – shiny, smooth as plastic and taupe in colour. A trail of mascara ran from the beak up to the young swan’s eyes, two inscrutable black eyes that were appraising me. The bird’s beak opened, and it uttered something that was barely audible, sotto voce, a mute swan muted. It sounded to me like it was saying “wet webs”.
Curiosity or caution exhausted, the swan pivoted to present me with its rump. The wind caught it, lifting a single feather that curled back, then another and then a third. Given a tailwind downstream, the bird was able to swim away, fast. These swans of the river have lives that are utterly dominated by the forces beneath them. Do I paddle or drift? Drift or paddle?
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