Swans, redux
Sometimes someone knows something is utterly beyond hope, but they can't walk away. I think that Swan 1 knew that there weren't going to be any cygnets. She kept hoping, for perhaps a month after her eggs should have hatched. Gradually, as the days went by, there were fewer eggs in the nest, down from seven to four, and eventually to none. She stayed on the nest, even after we stopped seeing her partner by her side (before, he'd usually been fetching food or, resting on the bank, in a guard position between the nest and the path).
About two weeks ago she finally abandoned the nest. Swan 2 faired no better, and there are no cygnets on our stretch of the river this year.
One morning last week I thought I saw a pair of swans by the very edge of the weir, by the sluice gates, where you never see birds, and it seemed that one of them had its head and neck below the water. But, I only caught a glimpse.
That evening I saw a swan's corpse floating by Reading bridge, a little way upstream from the weir, upside-down. It hasn't been a good year for the swans around here.