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The swans seem fine and patient, day after day. They have their eggs in a nice big nest, to which they keep adding bits: a piece of wooden fence, some more straw, a bit of plastic sheeting, whatever comes to beak. So she sits, and he chases rats and swims around, and from time to time she covers the eggs carefully in straw, for warmth or concealment or both, and steps off the nest for a little while.
Humans who come along at those times reach unhappy conclusions, that if they see no eggs there are no eggs and someone must have stolen them, an evil someone who should be severely punished. And then that man wanders off, still angry, and we stand around and discover that the swan has her eggs, and she turns them over and settles back in.
But we are all impatient for cygnets, which should hatch soon. This would be easier if I'd noted exactly when the eggs were laid. My current hunch is that they will hatch while I am off in Madison. But that's partly because I always seem to miss something if I go away more than overnight during the Spring, and almost everything else has already happened, much of it early, except the wild roses. And I don't think all of those will go from first bloom to done in five days, even in such a compressed season.
We have ducklings. We have goslings. We even seem to have baby starlings already. But I want cygnets.
Humans who come along at those times reach unhappy conclusions, that if they see no eggs there are no eggs and someone must have stolen them, an evil someone who should be severely punished. And then that man wanders off, still angry, and we stand around and discover that the swan has her eggs, and she turns them over and settles back in.
But we are all impatient for cygnets, which should hatch soon. This would be easier if I'd noted exactly when the eggs were laid. My current hunch is that they will hatch while I am off in Madison. But that's partly because I always seem to miss something if I go away more than overnight during the Spring, and almost everything else has already happened, much of it early, except the wild roses. And I don't think all of those will go from first bloom to done in five days, even in such a compressed season.
We have ducklings. We have goslings. We even seem to have baby starlings already. But I want cygnets.
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From: (Anonymous)
And here they are...
The first one hatched yesterday (Thursday, May 23), the second today.