The distance to the end of my garden from the back of my “new” house (I moved in eight months ago) is about the length of a cricket pitch. Beyond it there is a lush line of trees and an intractable tangle of bramble, bindweed and balsam, which drops steeply down to the banks of the River Wharfe.
Along this stretch of the Wharfe there is a corridor in which trees, weeds and animals have free rein, a sort of riparian republic buffered from the human world. Living within the breathing space of the river is fantastically noisy and eventful, like being in a Yorkshire jungle. Swifts scream above the trees, scything through clouds of midges and mosquitoes; kingfishers and grey wagtails flash their colours in the green; beetles clatter against the bright windows at night; the screeches of little owls often pierce my dreams.
Even so, it was a surprise when, in early May, a pair of mute swans commenced nest-building on a patch of willow-shadowed riverside grass next to a nearby office complex, once a worsted mill. It seemed such a brazen, exposed spot, so vulnerable to malice or stupidity. But the local response was fascination and concern; on my visits I overlapped with half a dozen different individuals watching them or “keeping guard”.
Over the course of six weeks I visited the swans whenever I could, absorbed by their labours: the male’s methodical foraging for the nest; the female’s careful arrangement of it all; the frequent swapping of incubation duties. Mute swans typically pair for life and learn with each brood, successful or otherwise, and there was a practised, purposeful air to them that might have been earned by experience. That rearing-up display whenever I outstayed my welcome was also a reminder of their readiness for self-defence.
My heart skipped a beat when I finally arrived to see the nest empty except for shell fragments. I found the pair a little further up the river. For a few anxious moments, there was no sign of young. But then four cygnets came into view, days old, scuttling around their parents in the water – tiny, urgent and utterly miraculous.
