The Benedictine Monks who maintained the Abbotsbury Swannery from 1000 AD up to the 1540s believed the first cygnet hatching of the spring, which usually occured between mid-May and late June, signaled the official start of summer.

A brood of 4 young cygnets swim with their mother inside a pond at the Abbotsbury Swannery near Weymouth, England on May 11. Up to 1,000 free-flying, uncaged swans reside in the Abbotsbury Swannery -- the only publicly accessible colony of nesting mute swans in the world.