{"id":171348,"date":"2025-12-02T17:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T17:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/171348\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T17:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T17:04:09","slug":"swan-saved-after-stopping-motorway-traffic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/171348\/","title":{"rendered":"Swan saved after stopping motorway traffic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A confused swan was rescued after bringing motorway traffic to a standstill.<\/p>\n<p>UK National Highways said the bird wandered around the four-lane carriageway of the M1 near Northampton in the East Midlands.<\/p>\n<p>Footage captured by CCTV cameras shows vehicles came to a complete stop to avoid hitting the animal.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" height=\"1270\" width=\"953\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/swan-saved-after-stopping-motorway-traffic.jpg\" alt=\"Traffic officer Adrian Woods and the rescued swan\"\/>Traffic officer Adrian Woods said the swan was \u2018a bit confused\u2019 (National Highways\/PA)<\/p>\n<p>The swan moved to the verge before heading back towards the path of oncoming traffic.<\/p>\n<p>Two National Highways traffic officers were dispatched from the nearby Watford Gap outstation.<\/p>\n<p>They safely captured the bird using a swan bag, which are carried in officers\u2019 vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>Once strapped in the bag, the bird was driven to a small lake off Junction 16 at Northampton.<\/p>\n<p>The incident happened at about 10.30am on November 19th.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" height=\"536\" width=\"953\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1764695049_343_swan-saved-after-stopping-motorway-traffic.jpg\" alt=\"The swan being released at a lake\"\/>The swan was taken to a lake (National Highways\/PA)<\/p>\n<p>Adrian Woods, one of the officers involved, said it was the fourth swan rescue he has carried out in his seven-year career with National Highways.<\/p>\n<p>He said: \u201cUnfortunately, when the roads are wet or there is a haze over the carriageway, swans think it is a body of water and land on the road.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is a bit of a shock when they hit the ground so the swan was a bit confused and its ego bruised.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe incident was dealt with in around 10 minutes with traffic flowing again and the bird taken to a nearby lake where it was soon swimming away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a happy ending all round.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A confused swan was rescued after bringing motorway traffic to a standstill. UK National Highways said the bird&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-171348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}