All publicity is good, but not if it is an obituary notice. So naturally, when a dead swan was found in the pretty fishing village of Cellardyke a little over two weeks ago, the first UK victim of bird flu, lamentations began for Fife’s East Neuk.

“Scotland’s tourism industry is bracing itself for a difficult summer,” wrote one correspondent the day after the swan’s “deadly strain of the H5N1 virus” was confirmed. The same day, a reporter from CNN put on a black cap to tell his US anchorman of the news that “everyone had been expecting but dreading” from “the beautiful little harbour here”. The crisis was deepening by the hour.

But all was not as it seemed. Inside the protective cordon that had been thrown about 2 miles around the village, preventing the transportation of birds and eggs, a festive spirit broke out, blowing away images of a Chernobyl-like wasteland. Last week, figures from VisitScotland showed that Anstruther, just along the road from Cellardyke, had attracted a 9% rise in visitors over the Easter weekend, and the nearby village of Crail welcomed hundreds more people than it had at the same time last year.

What attracted the tourists, apparently, were pictures of Cellardyke’s whitewashed harbourside cottages and its craw-stepped gables flashing up on television screens. These images were supported by reports that conjured up the sound of little fishing boats knocking against the harbour wall. This was the Forth estuary, but not as they know it in Buckhaven and Methil.

“The pictures were brilliant,” says Eleanor Bowman, the mother of Radio 1 DJ Edith and proprietor of the Craw’s Nest hotel in Anstruther, just half a mile from Cellardyke. “The place looked lovely. The weather was terrific.”

Some locals, it’s true, were briefly infected by prevailing pessimism. Bowman herself feared that the impact of bird flu might be similar to the effect of foot and mouth disease. Then, she calculates, her business lost £100,000 in missed trade as American tourists stayed away — even though animals in Fife were not affected. This time around, a party of 10 tourists cancelled as soon as the news of bird flu got out.

Others hesitated before they set off for their Easter break. “Is it safe there?” asked an old lady from Forfar by telephone, the weekend after the news broke. Bowman assured her that it was. And so that cautious traveller, and all her friends, felt able to attend the Inner Wheel daffodil tea party, organised by the Rotary Club. By all accounts, the party rocked — perhaps more than usual because of the whiff of danger in the air.

“Easter was good, it really was,” concludes Bowman.

Two weeks on, it is even possible to detect among the locals a note of regret that the heady, thrilling days of crisis have passed.

“It was madness for a couple of days,” says Wendy Mitchell, proprietor of the Haven, a restaurant that sits on Cellardyke’s now famous harbour. “There were press from everywhere and you couldn’t get a seat in our place. We were making bacon rolls all day for them.”

But last Thursday, with the sun struggling to break through a grey North Sea sky, there was little sign of the boom. “They’ve all left,” said Mitchell, dolefully, from her vantage point overlooking the harbour. “I can’t see anyone at all.”

You suspect that it is only a temporary lull in trade in this idyllic spot. One more dead swan could quickly have the tourists high-tailing it back to Cellardyke.

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