This must be one of the best books I have read in a long time. It is short, sweet and thought provoking. It is all about a love match between mute swans followed by a love affair and an unusual break up. It is all about the beauty of the Scottish landscape and the behaviour of swans. It is all about human frailty and unintended consequences of do gooding. Beware egg-eating otters. The illustrations complement the text perfectly. It is a sad and moving story but it is just a way of life and we shouldn’t feel sad. ( )

In this slim book, Crumley reflects upon the beauties and harsh realities of nature. His façade of pragmatism and objective detachment for the subjects of his interest is belied by his efforts to aid a pair of mute swans successfully hatch a clutch of eggs.

He accepts his and their failures as unsentimentally as Nature itself, but his feeling of loyalty to the old pen, more sustained and faithful than that of her mate, his realisation of his love for her as a fellow-being, and, ultimately, his sense of loss at her death, tempered as it is by his acknowledgement that in death her body sustains the life of other creatures, are testiments to the deep, personal connection he experiences to this wild creature, which occupies a privileged place in the heart of the not-so-dispassionate swan-watcher.

Brockway's engravings of the swans, including a couple featuring Crumley himself, are a fitting complement to the text. ( )