# The queen swan

*A field note*

She is on the postcard. She is in the ballet. By an old royal prerogative she is property of the Crown. She is also, in May, sitting on a nest within the reeds, presiding over eggs she will not leave for more than ten minutes at a stretch in the next five weeks. The poets wrote with grandeur of her white plumage. They did not write of the brood patch. Seldom seen. Equally essential part of the regalia. Hour after hour, the body heat. And by appointment only, the turning of the eggs.

The vigil over these weeks is pure pomp and circumstance. The cob on the water, protecting the perimeter, enables the queen to sit on her throne. She turns the eggs. No nurse nor textbook to guide her. It prevents the membrane that contains her young from sticking to the porous egg. She leaves for minutes at a time — a drink, a mouthful of grass — then returns. Every movement minimised. Every moment focused on the heat, on the eggs. It is a duty written into the genetic code. Hour after hour, day after day, the same gestures repeated. The ceremony of the bill turn. The settling. The brief step away and the urgent return.

> **She turns the eggs by appointment only.**

She laid them one by one, over days. Each egg arrived pale, faintly green, faintly stained. She did not fully settle until the last one was laid. Until then, she moved between the nest and the water, between duty and the pull of her own hunger. But once the clutch was complete — once she knew, somehow, that there were enough — everything changed. She settled deeper. The heat concentrated. The vigil began in earnest. Now there are no more long departures. Now every moment is held for them.

## Off the throne

She steps away from the nest. She appears to take her time, to rush for nothing. Yet on land, the body is wrong. The legs sit too far back — built for water, not ground. Every footfall slow, placed. The neck swings to keep her balanced. She waddles from a clutch of warm, incubating eggs to a waterside. Occasionally beyond.

The water. She slips in and the awkwardness is gone. The neck rises. The body finds the medium it was designed for. She forages — not hunting, not seeking anything in particular, just searching for whatever's there. Her bill dips into the water, pulling at aquatic plants. A reed shoot. Vegetation. Barely enough to blunt the hunger, to take the sharpest edge off.

The eggs are out of sight. She has left them entirely. Three or four minutes — no more — of trust: that the cob is watching, that the nest will hold, that nothing arrives in those few minutes that cannot be repelled. Then the pull back. The slow walk again, the unhurried climb up the bank, the body folded carefully back over the clutch.

## The sacrifice

The starvation has begun. Her body is burning through reserves. She does not linger anywhere except the nest. The pattern repeats. Days pass. Her body thins. The reserves deplete. Hunger becomes her constant state, her obsession narrowing to a single point: the eggs.

## If you find one

Watch from distance. The other side of the water is enough. We have the benefit of technology — a pair of binoculars, a spotting scope, the zoom on your phone — and any of these gives you the entire scene: the bill turn, the settling, the urgent return. The cob will be on his perimeter, doing his job. Yours is the looking — and the perimeter beyond his. If you see others taking unnecessary chances, remind them there are laws here that they break at their peril. Hers is everything else.