Twenty years ago, before I moved to Somerset, a flock of Bewick’s swans would spend the winter months on the moor near my home. Elsewhere on the levels, flocks of several hundred could be found. Yet in the years since I have lived here, I have seen these elegant birds just a handful of times.
The smallest of Britain’s three species of swan has vanished from many of its former haunts; fewer than 5,000 birds now make the journey here each autumn from their breeding grounds on the Siberian tundra.
