Yesterday, I returned to the dead swan. Jo had found it caught up in the reeds at the Park and gave it to me, knowing Mell and Forest School interested in this sort of thing.
The sheer beauty of it, stopped me for quite some time, before I got out my knife, felt for the joint that connected the great wing to the bird, and cut into the flesh.
Since the 12th century, the Crown has held the right to ownership over all wild, unmarked mute swans in open water. It remains illegal to eat swans in England, but for different reasons to those in the past. Mute swans are protected as a ‘wild bird’ by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (UK), and it remains an offence to kill, injure or take a wild bird, or to take, disturb or destroy the eggs of a wild bird.
Kaliwood 