10/12/2025
Swan Mornings…
When I arrive, I hear them long before I see them—calling across the distance, somewhere beyond the reed belt. Before I step over the little rise that opens the view across the area, they are already there, filling the silence. The air is sharply cold. It’s long before sunrise, and everything is quiet except the swans.
I sit down and wait for the light. Some herons lift off, black-headed gulls are scattered across the water and slowly become active, and after a while a kingfisher begins to hunt along the bank beside me. The whooper swans drift across the water, come closer, pass by, turn, and circle back again. The light shifts. The sun rises, and a thin layer of mist lifts into a brightness that feels almost unreal.
The water stays calm. The first sunlight slowly touches the frost-covered trees along the shore. It grows brighter and the animals become more active. The first large flocks of greylag geese lift into the air, and little by little the whooper swans and the bewick’s swans also head off toward the nearby fields to feed.
Every morning I returned to the same place, but it was never the way it had been the day before. I’m looking forward to the ones still to come.
