Our little village is home to a pair of mute swans that we occasionally see when we take a stroll on the boardwalk. The first two springs that we were here, the swans had a nest near a building in the historic fishing village but unfortunately the eggs never hatched. Both years the nest was quite close to the water, and it's likely that at high tide in the spring the nest and eggs got wet. This year, though, the swans built their nest on a higher nearby bank (according to this news article, a local fisherman actually towed the nest from its usual spot to the new location). We couldn't see the nest from the boardwalk, but we were told that it was there and safe, and eventually the chicks hatched. There is a great picture here by a local photographer of the family in the nest. Two of the babies survived, and we saw them several times over the summer in the village. Evidently the cygnets, as they are called, fledge at 60 days old, but can stay with the parents until the next breeding season.
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