CCTV footage showed a swan bringing a four-lane stretch of a busy motorway to a standstill.
National Highways said the bird wandered across the M1 near Northampton last month.
Traffic officer Adrian Woods helped to move it to a small lake off junction 16, resulting in “a happy ending all round”.
He and a colleague were dispatched from the nearby Watford Gap outstation when the incident was reported at about 10:30 GMT on 19 November.
