DAWLISH is waiting in eager anticipation for the arrival of the next generation of Black Swans.

Mum Kimba is currently sitting on a nest of five eggs which are expected to hatch by the end of February.

The nesting site in rushes alongside the Brook has been cordoned off by the town’s waterfowl wardens.

The first egg to be laid was attacked by seagulls but the breeding pair Bert and Kimba went on to lay five further eggs which are now due to hatch later this month.

The breeding pair of Bert and Kimba last previously had six eggs in September last year.

Those offspring, of which four remain, are now juveniles.

Black Swans have been the emblem of Dawlish for more than 50 years.

There are records of them in the early 20th century but they died out between the two world wars.

In the late 1940s, Captain GRS Pitman, a game warden in Uganda, presented a pair of Black Swans to Dawlish in memory of his parents.