World's largest waterfowl staging resounding recovery
The trumpeter's sonorous call is once again being heard in much of the land
By Doreen Armitage
THE MUD and gravel thudded and pinged on the underside of our truck as we rolled along the narrow logging road, soft from the early March thaw. The red of the swamp dogwood branches and hazelnut catkins and the mauve of blackcap raspberry bushes shone among the browns and greys of other shrubs and grasses.
We were travelling in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, heading for a hot spring. It was too early in the year to see much wildlife, but suddenly, in a swamp to our right, a flash of white caught my eye. As we slowed to a stop, I focused my binoculars on a pair of gleaming white swans, anxiously watching us. Slipping quietly from the truck, I approached close enough to hear their booming horn-like call as they took to flight across the surface of the pond, escaping our intrusion and gaining safety at the centre of the nearby lake. They were trumpeter swans.
We walked across the rocky shore to get a closer look, and found two white rings, about an arm's length across, made up of dozens of soft feathers, gently ruffling in the breeze. The swans had been preening and plucking their body feathers, probably as a result of plumage moult. These trumpeters were wintering as a single pair near the B.C. coast and would soon return north to their breeding grounds in the subarctic.
Trumpeter swans (Cygnus buccinator) are native to this continent. With a wingspan of three metres, they are the largest waterfowl in the world. The cob (adult male) weighs up to 12 kilograms. The adult's resplendent white plumage is in sharp contrast to that of the cygnet which, like the Ugly Duckling, is a dull grey. (The tundra or whistling swan is similar in appearance except it has a more sloping bill, usually with a small yellow patch in front of the eye; its call is a high-pitched bark-whistle.) The trumpeter's call is its best identifying characteristic, similar to the deep resonant notes of a French horn. The Latin word buccinator means "a trumpeter".
For the past hundred years, trumpeters have populated only the western part of Canada and the United States. In summer, they nest in the forests of Alaska, the Yukon, the southwestern Northwest Territories, northern British Columbia, the Grande Prairie-Fort St. John region of Alberta, and the Cypress Hills in Saskatchewan. In winter the Alaskan birds migrate to B.C., and the rest to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Wyoming and Montana. The trumpeters I saw wintering in the Coast Mountains had probably travelled south from Alaska in October or November and, in March, would soon be leaving for their long flight north.
Early in the 1900s, the trumpeter was near extinction. The total known population in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho in 1932 was 69. (It is now accepted that a few more existed in Canada and Alaska.) Since then, conservation efforts have increased the world population dramatically. Recent surveys have tallied some 10,000 trumpeters, 675 of which nest and breed in Canada. Still, trumpeter swans are considered a rare species by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, an organization of specialists from federal, provincial and private conservation agencies.
Eastern Canada has had no native trumpeters since the 19th Century. They used to be abundant, though, as this 1701 description by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, the commandant of Fort Pontchartrain (now Detroit) shows: "There are such large numbers of swans that the rushes among which they are massed might be taken for lilies." Archeological records of a site in northern Newfoundland dated at about 2000 BC include some trumpeter and tundra swan bones, the most easterly Canadian evidence of the birds. Other reports show trumpeters in the 17th to 19th centuries in western Quebec, throughout Ontario, and in northeastern Manitoba. Harry Lumsden, a research scientist with the Ontario ministry of natural resources, has published a detailed study of the historical records of trumpeter and tundra swans in Eastern Canada. He estimates that as many as 130,000 trumpeters might have lived east of the Rocky Mountains in the 17th Century.
In those years, trumpeters were hunted for their meat and eggs. A report from a fur trader in 1795 states that the eggs of the trumpeter ". . . are so big that one of them is a sufficient meal for a moderate man without bread or any other addition . . . The flesh of both (trumpeter and tundra) is excellent eating, and when roasted is equal in flavour to young heifer-beef, and the cygnets are very delicate." (The word cygnet originated as a French epicurean term and referred to the birds that were tender enough to eat.)
The killing of swans by settlers and native people for food was probably the major cause of their decline. Another was the trade in swan skins and quills. Fur-trade records from London reveal that 108,000 swan skins were sold from 1823 to 1877. The skin and down were used for powder puffs, feathers for boas and other female apparel, quills for fine pens, and the windpipes for flutes. Trumpeter swans have been protected since 1916 by the Migratory Birds Convention Act. Hunting clubs and hunter education programs provide swan identification information: swans are all white; snow geese, a game bird, have black wing tips.
Biologists are now surveying areas where trumpeters nest to determine the distribution and abundance of adults and young, and to locate as many breeding areas as possible so conservation measures may be taken. However, it is not easy to make an accurate count of a bird that spends from May to October on isolated northern lakes and ponds, then migrates south for the winter, dispersing throughout B.C. and the northwestern U.S.
Richard W. McKelvey, a trumpeter swan specialist with the Canadian Wildlife Service, has participated in several surveys in the Yukon since 1978. Using float planes, survey teams fly 300 metres above the wetlands, counting adult and young trumpeters. On their breeding grounds the birds are aggressively territorial. Single pairs usually nest alone on small isolated lakes; larger lakes may be occupied by two breeding pairs. Young and unpaired birds flock on unoccupied lakes until they mate, usually for life. Wild swans live for about 20 years.
Tundra swans also nest in the north, and are difficult to tell from trumpeters at a distance, but, because tundra swans favour lakes and rivers beyond the treeline, the trumpeter count is considered reasonably accurate.
The largest concentration of nesting trumpeters is located in the Toobally Lakes district in the southern Yukon and the Nahanni River region in southwestern N.W.T. As a result of last summer's survey, the population of nesting trumpeters in Canada is now estimated at 675 birds.
Wintering trumpeters are even more difficult to survey. In their migration southward throughout B.C. and the northwest states, only about half the population has been recorded, and many migration routes are unknown, although they appear to be in the interior rather than along the coast. Rick McKelvey instituted a system of sighting cards and for the past six years has collected reports from various localities throughout B.C. Anyone knowing the whereabouts of wild swans is encouraged to write the Canadian Wildlife Service (P.O. Box 340, Delta, B.C. V4K 3Y3) for a supply of these cards.
Although the trumpeter favours an isolated habitat, it is not always shy of humans. Clyde Burton, founder, manager and heart of the Cranberry Lake Wildlife Sanctuary in Powell River, B.C., plays host to dozens of trumpeters every winter. Adults from previous years walk right up to him. Their young land out on the lake, nervous at first, but after observing their parents, approach and eventually become even tamer than the adults. One young adult, flapping his wings to increase his speed, would rush across the field to the shed door the moment the feed buckets were brought out. Another would come rushing over at the sound of a whistle.
Burton and McKelvey have banded and neck-collared trumpeters every January for the past six years to learn more about their migration routes. The collars, 10-centimetre plastic tubes which fit snugly, are green with easy to read letters and numbers for B.C. and the rest of the Pacific coast, orange for the Yukon, red for the N.W.T., and yellow for Alberta. The codes, identifiable through binoculars or a telescope, pinpoint the banding location. Records are kept at the CWS Banding Unit in Ottawa and duplicate records are maintained at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Anyone seeing a banded bird should attempt to read the code, or at least identify the colour of the band, and notify a wildlife official.
The most densely populated wintering area for trumpeters in Canada is near the town of Comox on the east coast of Vancouver Island. From just six birds in 1965, the population had increased to 885 by 1984. This increase is triple the rate of the world trumpeter population and is a curious anomaly. Swans are usually welcomed most places, but this group is causing problems with farmers' crops. Pasture grasses now seem to be their preferred food, rather than the plants in the estuaries.
Another well-known Canadian wintering spot is Lonesome Lake, B.C., where swans have been fed grain since 1932. The birds' caretakers, Trudy and Jack Turner, took over from Trudy's father, Frank Edwards, in 1941. During extremely cold periods, they feed barley (provided by the CWS) to the flock of about 500 trumpeters.
A larger-than-life swan greets visitors to a park in Grande Prairie in west-central Alberta. A remnant population of trumpeters has nested in this area since 1918, and the townsfolk have become very protective of them. The swans arrive every year in the latter part of April. Many lakes are still frozen, so they feed on grain from farmlands until May, when nesting on shallow lakes begins.
Both sexes work to build the nest -- or to rebuild one from previous years -- on the shore, on small islands or even on floating sedge marshes. A clutch of five to nine eggs is laid, each egg weighing about 325 grams. In June, and sometimes into July, the cygnets hatch, emerging wet from the eggs, but in a few hours becoming dry and fluffy, and covered in pale grey down.
The first two weeks are the most hazardous for the cygnets. Their clumsy parents may trample some, while others, on their first ventures from the nest, may become entangled in the loose nest material and drown. On average, only two or three cygnets in a clutch survive to join their parents in the fall migration south just before freeze-up.
From a population of 100 in 1946, the swans at Grande Prairie had increased to 352 in 1985. Biologists are watching with concern the encroachment of agricultural lands into the swans' breeding habitat. Land-use regulations are in place on Alberta Crown land only, not on privately owned land.
Because trumpeters tend to return to the same habitat year after year, rather than expand their range to grounds with more favourable conditions, an outbreak of disease at one of the wintering grounds could prove disastrous.
Two attempts have been made in Canada recently to introduce the bird to new locations. In 1983 and 1984, the CWS and Alberta's Fish and Wildlife Division introduced trumpeters to a migration path totally within Canada -- from nesting grounds in Elk Island National Park, east of Edmonton, to wintering areas on the coast. Based on the concept that other waterfowl, particularly geese, are able to relocate to their former habitat, adult females were taken from their wintering grounds in Powell River to "nest" in Alberta. There, cygnets hatched from incubated eggs of the Grande Prairie birds were introduced to the females, and family groups were formed. Biologists fitted the birds with radio transmitters to monitor their progress. Unfortunately, the adults did not return instinctively to their former habitat. Some of the relocation techniques used by the biologists, however, were successful and will benefit future reintroduction attempts.
Grande Prairie birds have also been used in an attempt to reintroduce the trumpeter in Ontario. Every spring from 1982 to 1984, eggs from the Grande Prairie flock were flown to Kortwright Waterfowl Park at Guelph. Here they were incubated and, when nearly ready to hatch, were placed under mute swans at Toronto's Ontario Place and at Cranberry Marsh near Whitby. The young birds were subsequently banded and wing-tagged. Two were sighted wintering at Chesapeake Bay in Maryland in December 1983, and in the spring of 1984, the same pair were seen on Lake Ontario east of Toronto.
Harry Lumsden, organizer of this reintroduction project, recently heard that a farmer had sighted two of the banded birds in his fields near Woodstock. One of them, a cob, had died and the farmer had buried it. After digging it up, Lumsden found lead pellets in its gizzard and in the earth under its decomposed body. This pioneering bird, which had travelled as an embryo from Alberta to Ontario, migrated as an adult to Chesapeake Bay, then back to Lake Ontario, was a victim of lead poisoning from spent shot, mistaken for food, ingested with its feed. Four remaining trumpeters, one from 1982, one from 1983 and two from 1984, are still alive.
Only time can tell whether these birds will survive to establish a breeding population in Ontario. A variety of life-threatening factors -- severe weather, predation, habitat disturbance or accidental shooting by hunters -- could easily silence the sonorous call that again echoes upon the eastern lakes, the trumpeters' ancestral home.
