Swan Song

We have a pond in the meadow at the back of the house, with the standard complement of bird-life: ducks, coots, moorhens, some rarities like teal and snipe, the occasional heron and usually a pair of swans. There was a pair when we arrived, more than ten years ago, who'd been here for years before that. One of them died in 2006 (of old age, according to village gossip) and the survivor flew away. It was nice when a new pair arrived last summer.

They hatched a brood of five cygnets this spring, and as the year and a game of Ten Little Indians progressed, we counted fewer and fewer until finally there was just one left. It grew well (about the size of a goose, when I put the binoculars on it yesterday) and was starting to change to adult plumage. Soon there'd be the entertainment of flying lessons, and maybe next year this one would come back with a mate of its own.

Yeah, right. You know that proverb about counting your chickens? It applies to other birds as well.

This cygnet, because it was well-grown, didn't just vanish like all the others. Instead, there was a big patch of grey-turning-white feathers in the meadow this morning, some with blood on them, and some pathetic puffs of baby-down that hadn't grown out yet. I'm no tracker, but a couple of paw-prints in the mud suggest the culprit was a fox, just like all the other times.

So much for that, then. I wish at least one had survived, because losing all of them seems unfair. Swans supposedly mate for life; I wonder do they also grieve at loss? I know cats do.

Certainly watching the two adult swans quartering the pond from end to end and poking into every patch of reeds and rushes suggested they felt more than just curiosity about Junior’s whereabouts - especially if they didn't see or hear the attack and don't know where their cygnet has gone. How much conclusion might they draw from those feathers when they find them? Enough to get what we call closure? I hope so.

I guess I'm not much of a countryman, because though I can cheerfully write about all sorts of messy death and destruction, I won't do even small-scale stuff myself. Utter hypocrisy: I eat meat, including game, but I won't go out with a shotgun. The loss of pets is another matter, of course – when Pip was killed last year it made me thoroughly wretched. (It's odd how life went abruptly downhill from there, culminating with Mum, and apart from a couple of notable high points has only recently started to climb back up again.) But I'm surprised at how annoyed I feel about a wild bird.

Maybe it's because I watched those cygnets from the time they hatched; maybe it's because I mentioned the presence of the fox to our landlord just last week and suggested something be done about it, even though I said (hollow laughter) "that last cygnet's probably big enough to be past risk by now." However the usual firearms around here are shotguns, and you only shoot foxes with rifles, and then only if they're a menace to sheep. (Apparently supergluing the sort of little bell you get on a cat-collar to the new lambs is enough to keep the foxes at bay... Who knew?)

So Reynard is still out there somewhere.

I think foxhunting with horses is still done here. I don't approve of it, but this time, if I'm here on Boxing Day (St Stephen's) or New Year's Day when the Hunt comes by, I intend to give them directions towards where they might find something to chase.

And I hope the swans have better luck next year.