One out foraging, one at home resting (noisy geese permitting).
The swans have been nesting for weeks, with one of them making trips out for food. Then yesterday I saw them both out on the canal – but no sign of any cygnets. They looked kind of downcast…
...but then I noticed something.
So now what I'm wondering is: how many more cygnets were in there? I'll try to find out over the weekend. #BabiesOnBoard 
There must be at least four of them in there.
Allow me to introduce you to this year's Hornsey cygnets, all six of them.
OK, form an orderly queue...
Fluffy.
Cygnets docking with the mothership.
If you’re having a stressful week and you want to watch 5 minutes and 48 seconds of week-old cygnets trying to clamber onto a slippery pipe and then trying to keep their balance on it, then that is a weirdly specific thing to want. But OK, whatever: youtube.com/watch?v=ZvBCc6…
The estate agent had told the coots that this was a quiet neighbourhood.
It’s hard to glide gracefully across the surface when the water drops this low.
Having a little huddle.
Two baby cootlings!
"If the plural of goose is geese, why isn't the plural of moose meese?"
"We meant any questions about the job."
"We meant any questions about the job."
Your own kids: beautiful and perfect.
Other people’s kids: a bloody nuisance.
Other people’s kids: a bloody nuisance.
Just passing by.
Caution: extreme fluffiness
You know when you've got a bit of spaghetti that turns out to be longer than you'd expected?
Sorry to say that we've lost one of the cygnets. But the other five are OK.
Yeah, they're doing fine, bless 'em.
Why do grown-ups always keep the nice food on a high shelf?
Look at those tiny little wings!
Enjoying a nice family day out.
It is scientifically impossible to enjoy a secret snack when you have siblings...
...and then they all join in the feast.
Youngsters these days spend so much time preening.
Another lazy afternoon...
They are going to go absolutely wild when they finally work out what those flappy things on their backs are for,
They're getting so big - feels like it was only a few weeks ago that they were tiny chicks all huddled up on their mum's back. Which it was.
"Mu-um! She's copying me again!"
Be sure to drink lots of water during this hot weather.
Ahhh, you can't beat a nice stretch.
Their commute is nicer than mine.
"We're not sleeping, we're just resting our eyes!"
Bathtime!
"Don't be absurd, I'm not scared of you, I'm four times your size. But… I've just remembered something important that I need to do in the other direction…"
Scenes from a lazy weekend.
The mini-flap and butt wiggle are cute, as long as you don’t think too hard about what’s going on at the back below the waterline...
Sometimes it takes a while to wake up properly.
Heading home at the end of a busy day.
Just hanging out.
TFW a pigeon has some bread and doesn't want to share it
If you watch very carefully, you might just be able to guess the moment when someone starts throwing bread into the water.
It's hard to whisper in someone's ear when you can't see where it is.
When you're sure it was somewhere around here that you dropped the keys.
A spot of light grazing.
As you can tell from their display of nonchalance at the end, the cygnets were never *really* scared of the dog.
And now, to commemorate the statesmanlike oratory we have enjoyed today from Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, I am honoured to present the Synchronised Standing Butt Waggle.
The great thing about siblings is that no amount of showing off will ever even slightly impress them.
The cygnets are not all equally good at climbing.
"No, they'd make me look too bookish. What else have you got?"
Can't beat a nice bit of grass.
When your sibling wants to play but you can't be bothered.
Tchaikovsky's earlier work, 'Cygnet Canal', was a less sophisticated ballet but it nonetheless delighted younger audiences.
I want to salute these two half-grown orphaned cootlings. They lost their family a few weeks ago in a turf war and got chased off to a strange part of the canal, where they were bullied by ducks. But they survived and eventually found their way back and now they are FEARLESS.
The cygnets get cranky when they have to go in the slow lane.
They haven't all realised that as they grow bigger, they need to stand farther apart.
A family preening interlude.
Flying practice! The cygnets aren't quite airborne yet, but their enthusiasm is infectious.
The kids seem to be alert for Something Extremely Important, but mum isn't taking it too seriously.
Someone has been mowing the grass on the bank upstream, and the result is an all-you-can-eat salad buffet.
The kids are larking around with their wings again.
The cygnets have now fully mastered the art of flying, with the minor exception of the "being in the air" aspect.
"Dad, can you do a neck stretch and wing ruffle at the same time? Look, I'll show you how."
It's OK to feed swans bread, but do break it up a bit before you throw it in. They struggle to cope with baguettes...
...and now they're starting to get the hang of how to handle it...
...and this is what we cygnetologists call a "feeding frenzy".
The swan family, having a quiet afternoon hanging around and LOOK OUT INCOMING GEESE
The kids are getting to the age where their voices are breaking.
This was the last time I saw the whole family together. Because...
...two of the cygnets have flown away.
I'm no expert, but the remaining three cygnets don't seem entirely ready to fly just yet.
And another one has flown off. Photos 4 hours apart.
I've found out where they're having their test flights. Not the best of camera angles, but you can just about see that they've started getting airborne.
One of the swans has gone off somewhere, and the other one seems a bit distressed.
"Yes, I am indeed larger than you thought. No, it's all muscle. Please be intimidated and flee."
This cygnet is now pretty much detached from the rest of the family.
The swans have taken one of the kids down to the lower stretch of the canal, leaving the other to find its own way in the world. Sometimes they fly away of their own accord, sometimes they need a bit of a shove.
Checking the river bed for food.
You don't realise just how big they are until one of them gets out of the water and starts walking towards you...
This one hasn't quite figured out what to do with its independence yet. Good exploring instincts, but it needs to work up the confidence to fly off.
I have yet to figure out what the swans' various squawks and nods all mean.
Hanging out on the pipe with a coot and a gull.
Thread-within-a-thread!
An unexpected view from my window. The lone cygnet has managed to get a bit lost. 1/7
An unexpected view from my window. The lone cygnet has managed to get a bit lost. 1/7
It must have climbed onto the low bank on the other side and then gone through the railings and down the drop. But there’s no clear route back to the water – much harder to jump up while fitting between railings. And this side has a high bank. 2/7
I spent a good half-hour trying to shepherd it towards the water and lure it with bread, but no joy. And the poor thing had to keep fending off crows and dogs. It got quite distressed and ended up waddling towards the road instead. 3/7
I looked online for help and found a charity called the Swan Sanctuary. Not sure what I thought they were going to do – despatch a rescue helicopter? But the man on the helpline said the best thing to do was… pick it up and carry it back to the water. theswansanctuary.org.uk 4/7
Seriously?? Seriously. “It’s more scared of you than you are of it.”
(Fact check: false.) 5/7
(Fact check: false.) 5/7
The trick is to carry it under one arm, restraining its wings so it can’t thrash and injure itself. So I did. It wasn’t happy – hissed a fair bit – but it didn’t fight. Lighter than I expected. Obviously, I didn’t stop for selfies, so here’s an artist’s impression. (Shut up.) 6/7
It worked! Safe and well.
Carrying a fully grown cygnet to safety was not something I’d ever imagined doing, but it was a hell of a buzz. I felt like that Attenborough camera crew who broke their non-intervention policy to help some penguin chicks out of a ravine. 7/7
Carrying a fully grown cygnet to safety was not something I’d ever imagined doing, but it was a hell of a buzz. I felt like that Attenborough camera crew who broke their non-intervention policy to help some penguin chicks out of a ravine. 7/7
A cormorant flies in. The swans are unimpressed; the heron is suspicious.
Heron and cormorant spot a fish at the same time.
That's such a big chunk of bread that the swans can happily share it with the geese, ducks, coots and moorhens. You'd think.
I’d never noticed how cute and silly the swans’ throats look when they’re gulping water.
Not entirely sure what the coot thinks it's doing here.
Newcomers! The odd duck with the red eyes is a pochard (had to look that up), and the swan is not one of our regulars. Must have flown in. This is on the upper stretch of the canal, where the lone cygnet is; both parents are on the lower stretch. Things could get interesting...
It's important to do your stretches in the morning.
OK, my image enhancement technology confirms that there are not one but two new adult swans on the same stretch of canal as the lone cygnet. I haven't yet seen them interact, but they seem to be keeping their distance.
Swans with their last cygnet, plus some geese trying to stay out of their way. If you watch extremely carefully, you might just notice a heron.
Two things have happened with the swans, and two things are soon going to happen. First: the parents have finally kicked out the cygnet that was still with them (the others were out a couple of months ago). The poor thing is none too happy. 1/4
The parents then moved to the upper stretch of the canal, where the lone cygnet has been minding its own business. But they don’t want that one hanging around either, so the second thing that’s happened is that they chased it off. 2/4
In a truly impressive piece of running away, the cygnet ducked through the hole there, went down the weir thingy that’s under the building, and out the bottom on the other side. Safely! 3/4
What’s going to happen next is that the two cygnets are going to meet again on the lower stretch – hopefully they’ll be friendly – and the parents are going to meet the two new adults who recently appeared on the upper stretch – that meeting, I think, will not be friendly. 4/4
Cygnets reunited!
This, nearly two weeks ago, was the last time I saw them. They’ve gone. One of the few things I’ve learned about cygnets is that wing-flapping is a social behaviour – and together, they worked up the momentum to fly off into the world. Good luck to them.
(If you were hoping for something more cinematically satisfying, here are last year’s cygnets flying away.)
Meanwhile, on the upper stretch of the canal, there is now only one pair of swans – they’ve seen the others off. But which pair won: the parents or the newcomers? Not wanting to be racist, but they do all look quite similar…
Time for the facial recognition software. It’s all in the beaks: the size of the bump on top (which is technically called a ‘knob’; I am not making this up) and its colouring, the shape of the light patch at the front, and the patterns of nicks on the side. It’s… the parents!
