Swan scene

It is spring at the Abbotsbury Swannery and most of the mute swans pairs now have cygnets. Mute swans can lay up to six eggs in a brood and, following a month of incubation by the female, all the eggs will hatch out in 24 hours. By mid-May many cygnets take to the water and quickly learn to feed on waterweed and the occasional insect. It will be late-June before their necks are long enough to reach vegetation at the bottom of the river, and autumn before they can fly.