Destination: England : The Peace and Grace of Swan Estate : On the Dorset coast, an ancient nesting ground has become a managed colony open to visitors in spring and summer

Without even looking up from my camera, I sensed trouble lurking at my left elbow. The mate of the elegant nesting swan I was photographing had sidled up to me, neck extended upward, powerful wings poised to send me and my equipment packing. I quickly drew my tripod back a few inches and the male, or cob, having shown me the boundary of his invisible fence, quietly waddled off.

Abbotsbury’s Swannery, the world’s only managed colony of mute swans that is open to the public during nesting season, draws thousands like me each spring to its protected spot on the Dorset coast of southern England.

From April through June (it is closed November through February), visitors to the five-acre wildlife refuge get a rare glimpse of swan life as approximately 100 pairs tend their nests, groom themselves, feed on rich underwater eelgrass, fight over territory and lead newly hatched cygnets into the water.

As I learned, wild swans are normally aggressive against intruders. Signals that visitors are too close include up-stretched necks and wings flexed in the shape of a roof. Although a swan can break a human arm or rib with a blow from its powerful neck, I was told that as far as Swannery officials know, none here has ever injured a visitor. Perhaps that’s because swan body language is crystal clear.

Accustomed to humans, the birds appear unconcerned as they turn their large greenish eggs or tidy up their huge water reed nests only a few feet from visitors. During my visit last May, I counted dozens of swan nests within camera’s reach. Six centuries of nesting on lands owned and managed by the Ilchester Estate have made them unusually blase about visitors. And why not? The swans were probably here long before medieval monks tended and raised them for food.

Although swans were mentioned here as early as 1393, the modern Swannery opened to the public in the late 1960s. After passing through a gate and paying a nominal fee, I made a stop at the Decoy Cottage, which serves as a visitors center, to learn about the swans and their habitat. Then I wandered freely along the paths, through the nesting area, which is bordered by marshes and the Fleet, a brackish lagoon that separates the Swannery from the English Channel.

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From recently retired swanherd John Fair, I learned that swans build their nests on the ground with water reed left from the winter harvest for roof thatch. Fair also told me that mute swans are not usually colonial, so the pairs that crowd the Swannery’s two-acre nesting site each spring must continually defend territory and right-of-way to the water.

Yet this is a swan-friendly habitat: flat land with food-rich streams and abundant nesting material. An adult bird eats about eight pounds of wet plant food a day, and the Fleet abounds in a favorite species, Zostera, or eelgrass.

Mute swans lack a loud call (hence the name), although they communicate eloquently with necks, wings and beaks when they feel threatened. An average adult male weighs 30 pounds and his mate, called a pen, typically weighs 10 pounds less. Comically awkward on land, mute swans are grace itself on water or in flight.

I recommend the small pleasure of visiting the swannery at feeding time. To ease competition for food during breeding season, the Swannery’s staff of five distributes wheat three times a day to nesting pairs (twice while visitors are present, at noon and 4 p.m.), as well as to several hundred young and non-breeding swans who quickly flock to the shore at the sight of pail and scoop.

Of about 600 eggs laid each year, only about a hundred cygnets survive due to predators such as foxes. Hard winters that diminish the herd’s food supply and competition from 20,000 other area waterfowl, also affect survival. But from the end of May through June it seems that the fluffy gray cygnets are everywhere.

Every other July, the Swannery conducts a roundup, during which the molting birds are caught, weighed, checked and ringed. One webbed foot of each Abbotsbury swan is notched to indicate it belongs to the Ilchester Estate. The staff records the number of eggs laid and hatched and monitors birds for disease and injury. Besides working with scientists who study mute swan habitat and behavior, the staff also interprets life at the Swannery for thousands of visitors each year.

Beyond their popularity with tourists and school groups, Abbotsbury swans also have their place in British tradition and history.

Helmets of the Queen’s bodyguard contain soft feathers from under the swan’s wings. Lloyds of London still uses quills from these birds as pens with which to enter shipping and insurance losses into their ledger known as the “Doom Book.” And Pavlova once studied their movements and danced among them on the shores of the Fleet.

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Since discovering this World Heritage Site several years ago, I try to return annually to observe a different phase of swan life on the Fleet. Sheltered from the English Channel by Chesil Bank, an eight-mile pebble beach popular with anglers and hikers along the Dorset Coastal Path, the Swannery and its namesake village offer a surprising number of things to see and do for those who love nature and the outdoors.

Situated slightly inland, on the coastal road between Weymouth and Bridport, the village of thatched limestone cottages and winding lanes resembles itself in old photographs. In spring, drifts of pink clematis float above door stoops and clumps of blue ceanothus billow against stone walls, as they doubtless have for centuries. The main road makes a right-angle turn at the Old Post Office, now a cozy tea shop and bed and breakfast. Rodden Row continues past small shops, an old coaching inn, a general store and several artisans’ workshops, before rising up and out of town like a wisp of smoke.

A stroll around this place referred to in the Domesday Book as “Abodesberi” reveals deep roots in Dorset’s past. Northwest of the village lie the remains of an Iron Age castle and burial mounds. (Dorset’s oldest surviving document is a fragment of an 11th-Century Viking King Kanute’s charter granting land at Abbotsbury to a pious couple, Orc and Thola.)

High on a hill overlooking the sea looms St. Catherine’s Chapel, named for the patron saint of spinsters. Standing beside this 15th-Century chapel on windy, steep-sided terraces that were once farm fields, you can picture Saxon pirates rowing into the Fleet with their booty. On a clear day, there are sweeping views of the Isle of Portland and the Fleet.

Between the Swannery and the village is a massive Tithe Barn, now a museum of rural life and a reminder of monastic life in the Middle Ages, when Abbotsbury’s Benedictine monks were prosperous landowners. Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries during the 16th Century changed all that. Sir Giles Strangways, whose family today counts 15 generations in Abbotsbury, purchased the abbey and its lands with the understanding that the buildings would be destroyed. Curiously, St. Catherine’s Chapel was left intact, perhaps as a landmark to sailors.

Ruins of the abbey’s gateway and walls testify to the final blow by parliamentarians during a heated 17th-Century civil war battle. Sadly, many monastery records and hand-illuminated manuscripts were lost as well, but stones from the dismantled abbey can be seen in the walls of Abbotsbury’s oldest cottages. And thanks to the village’s faithfulness to architectural style, it’s hard to distinguish ancient cottages from newer ones.

When the weather turns rainy, as it inevitably does near the sea, I visit the workshops of local artisans. In 1993, Prince Charles unveiled local sculptor James Kidd-Brown’s swan bench for the Swannery’s 600-year celebration. Last May, I visited Kidd-Brown’s workshop and watched him chisel a mermaid on horseback from glistening white Portland stone like that used to build St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

Hardly the first to be charmed by this place, I won’t be the last.

It appeared in the Wessex novels of Thomas Hardy, a frequent visitor, as “Abbotsea.” Writers such as Siegfried Sassoon and T. E. Lawrence once lived here in abandoned coast-guard cottages along the beach, where the famed Lawrence of Arabia rode his motorcycle at top speed, throwing up the reddish pebbles in his wake.

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GUIDEBOOK

England’s Swan Lake

Getting there: Abbotsbury is approximately 120 miles southwest of London on B3157, west of Weymouth. Connections by rail from London’s Waterloo Station, or by bus from Victoria Station, to Weymouth; from there by taxi or bus.

Where to stay: Abbey House, Church Street, Abbotsbury, Weymouth, Dorset DT3 4JL. B&B; in historic building on ancient site of Abbey of St. Peter; rates about $85 per room, per night, including breakfast; from the United States telephone 011-44-1305-871330.

East Farm House, Woodcoate Stud, East Farm, Abbotsbury, Weymouth, Dorset DT3 4JL. Down-to-earth working family farm with horses and ponies for hire; rates $25 per person, per night, including breakfast; tel. 011-44-1305-871363.

The Ilchester Arms, 9 Market St., Abbotsbury, Weymouth, Dorset DT3 4JL. Old coaching inn with pub and conservatory restaurant; rates $85 per room, per night, including breakfast; tel. 011-44-1305-871243.

Linton Cottage, Linton Hill, Abbotsbury, Weymouth, Dorset DT3 4JL. Three rooms at the east end of town; $60-$65 per person, per night, including breakfast; tel. 011-44-1305-871339.

Old Post Office, Abbotsbury, Weymouth, Dorset DT3 4JL. I stayed in one of the four guest rooms in a 17th-Century thatched building; rates $35 per person, per night, including breakfast; tel. 011-44-1305-871383.

Attractions: Abbotsbury Swannery, Abbotsbury; open March through October, daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; admission $7.80 for adults, $2.20 for children; telephone locally 0305-871684.

For further information: British Tourist Authority, 551 Fifth Ave., Suite 701, New York 10176, (800) GO2 BRITAIN.

Abbotsbury Tourism Office, West Street, Abbotsbury, Weymouth, Dorset DT3 4JL; tel. 01305-871130.