The Daily Bucket is a regular feature of the Backyard Science group. It is a place to note any observations you have made of the world around you. Rain, sun, wind...insects, birds, flowers...meteorites, rocks...seasonal changes...all are worthy additions to the bucket. Please let us know what is going on around you in a comment. Include, as close as is comfortable for you, where you are located. Each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the patterns that are quietly unwinding around us.
November 2014
San Juan Islands, PNW
A few days ago on my usual late afternoon bike ride along the beach road I heard a strange call echoing across the valley. It sounded sort of like the flock of geese that live in the bay here year round, but not quite right. I looked up and saw why...
Swans! I hadn't heard their hoarse trumpeting since last spring. Like the ducks who have been repopulating the county over the last few weeks, the swans have returned after their sojourn north/inland for breeding over the summer. I threw down my bike and snapped my first sighting of Trumpeter Swans for the season, then followed them in the direction they landed. There is a small tidal pond on the other side of the beach road the swans are particularly fond of on the island where I live. It is surrounded by private property though, so I can't get very close (and that's probably just as well, for their own peace and privacy). I glimpsed four swans swimming amidst geese and ducks.
more on the winter swans of San Juan County...
(All photos by me. In Lightbox...click to enlarge)
At dawn the next morning I heard many swans hooting in concert, all the way from my house a quarter mile away through the window. I am not an early riser, but this morning I dressed and went out in the frosty clear day to see what was happening in the pond. Like the previous dusk, the light was dim, but I got a few pics.
Through the grasses I counted 13 swans, along with Canada geese, a big flock of Ringneck ducks and a few wigeons, mallards and gulls. A busy scene at first light.
I didn't notice it at the time, but looking at my pics later I saw a remarkable and very welcome sight: a juvenile swan! Young swans in their first year are gray rather than white. Do you see it?
Last year I did not see a single juvenile swan in all my observations through the winter. That's never a good sign for a population. Our county Audubon group conducted a simultaneous tally of Trumpeters throughout the county last winter on a single morning, staking out all their known haunts (this pond is one) and alerting islanders everywhere to be on the lookout. 100 swans were tallied: 48 counted on San Juan, 45 on Lopez and 7 on Orcas. Of those 100 swans total, only 7 were juveniles.
The vast majority of 12,000 wintering Trumpeter swans in Washington state are found in the agricultural lowlands west of the Cascades, with the highest concentration in the Skagit River delta. Very few come over the water to the San Juans, but some do reliably. Reports to our local Audubon group show swans have been arriving since one week ago, and two observers on San Juan have reported numerous juveniles! This looks to be a better year for the population.
Wintering swans glean from fields and feed on aquatic vegetation in marshes and ponds. Occasionally I see them in the bay, but they prefer fresh to salt water. They are less skittish than geese. On this cold early morning, the geese got spooked, even though I was a ways off, and exploded out of the pond. Some of the swans flew a short ways and then settled down for a while longer.
I don't see them in this pond as much in the daytime. Yesterday afternoon I saw them flying in the late afternoon sun...
and checking the pond, I saw a few in there with other waterfowl. Likely they spend the night there. No youngster this time, but I have the whole winter to watch for them!
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