Spring is an exciting time on Southampton Common. The insects are beginning their task of simultaneously delighting and dismaying me (I look adoringly at them and they fly away from me); the Old Cemetery is awash with the vibrant colours of croci and daffodils, and baby creatures are joining the Common Family. The hatching of the cygnets is a highlight of the year for many people, and once the first head has been spied in the swans’ nest there is an almost palpable impatience as we wait for the brood to emerge and slip into the water under the tender tutelage of their parents. They are hard to resist, but, like all children, they grow up far too quickly.
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By the end of the year, the cygnets have grown up, and have left, or are in the process of leaving, the Common to find homes of their own. They often move down to the River Itchen, and when I am over that way I often wonder which of the elegant swans that I see are the little cygnets whose fluffy antics I watched with such delight.
