Birth of a Swan

Strasbourg is a river city. The old part of the city is actually an island in the middle of the l'Ill river. As the l'Ill meanders towards it's confluence with the Rhine, it breaks into a confusing array of smaller streams, canals, and shipping channels. As it happens, our apartment is on the banks of one of these smaller streams - the l'Aar.

Amanda's bedroom looks out over the l'Aar. One of the downsides of living next to a river (actually, more like a creek) is that noisy groups in canoes can spoil your late sleeping on week-end mornings. The upside is that you can feed the ducks from your bedroom window.

This spring, we had a new neighbor for a short time. A pair of swans built their nest on the bank opposite Amanda's bedroom. The mother swan sat on her eggs continuously while the father swan would do the things that father swans do - sit nearby and sleep, search for food, and disappear at night most probably into beer joints.

For three weeks the mother swan sat on her nest. Then, one morning, she and her mate could be seen feeding five new chicks. Little brown things were these chicks, exactly like ugly ducklings.

Then they were gone.....

I suspect they moved downstream. Or perhaps, the swam up towards town where feeding is easy on bread thrown by tourists. Anyways, it was kind of disappointing to lose our new neighbors so quickly.