When Covid-19 struck at the start of spring, many walkers on the canal path at Heybridge noticed the resident swans with their multiple cygnets.

The elegant adults and their fluffy offspring featured in social media posts and surely brightened some of the darkest days of the pandemic as local people took their daily exercise.

Today (Tuesday, 10 November) as the second lockdown stretches on, some of the cygnets were spotted at a distance from their parents, still donning the brownish-grey feathers of their youth but clearly quite big now and not so far from a snowier coat.

Further up the canal, the adult pair appeared as unbothered by 2020 as ever as they amused passers-by with a prolonged 'bottoms up' act, upending themselves in the water.