Wintering Trumpeter Swans
Russ Hanson
I counted 175 Trumpeter Swans, December 15th on open water just north of Cushing in the middle of Bass Lake along with probably 500 Canada Geese. During the cold spell a few weeks earlier, when all the local lakes froze over and ice fishing began, a small group of swans and geese paddled the center of the lake to keep an open spot, shrinking quite small before the milder recent weather let them open up maybe half of the lake and attract up to 1000 birds at a time.
The birds have excellent feed on the nearby corn and soybean stubble, where a dry year made the beans shorter and more prone to be missed by the combine as well as the corn ears with shorter ends also passed through the combine and littering the ground with high energy food.
My own story with Trumpeter Swans begin in 1989 when my brother, Everett, who worked for the DNR out of Grantsburg, began telling us about the re-introduction of swans to Wisconsin through Crex Meadows. He described bringing in eggs from Alaska, hatching them and raising the young in pens at Crex to protect them from predators. Crex employees dressed up like parent swans and shepherded the small flock of cygnets around the first year.
Swans take 3 to 4 years before they nest. 1993 was exciting for us as one of the very first Crex raised swan pairs nested on Orr Lake, just off of Hwy 87 near the Polk Burnett county border, where we could see them from our lake cottage, high on the hillside overlooking the lake. All spring we had been serenaded by the trumpeter swan, so named because their call is so loud that as they took their dawn flight around the lake honking to chase away geese, they woke the whole neighborhood. Things quieted down for six weeks as we noted the swans built a nest along the north shore of the lake, pulling cattails and reeds to build a mound nearly 2 feet above the lake level.
Then one weekend in early June, Father and Mother Swans came floating by our lakeshore dock with five youngsters. And all summer long we watched them grown and thrive.
A young woman stopped at the cabin early June on a Saturday and asked to view the swans from our porch. “Your brother Everett told me that you can see the swans from your home.” We had been watching the five cygnets and parents floating around the lake for a few weeks. “This is a wonderful place to watch the swans!” exclaimed Mary, who told us she was a college student hired for the summer to keep track of the nine nesting pairs of swans in the area – the first ever nesting since introduction. We gave her the key and permission to do her weekly survey of the swans from our porch and we too were thrilled to see and hear the first swans nesting in Wisconsin for over a century, from the time they were hunted to Wisconsin extinction.
Trumpeter Swans are well suited to stay in Northern Wisconsin all winter, and most do if they can find open water areas and a source of food. Here and there even in the coldest part of winter there are streams, parts of the St Croix River and lake springs that keep areas open, and so they stay. Early in the spring, before the ice melts, they pick a nesting ground on a pond, lake or beaver dam flowage, begin protecting the territory and in May nest with the likelihood of 4-7 youngsters growing to maturity from each pair – the reason why they have flourished.
For many years the swan pair stayed on Orr Lake and entertained us, having 4-6 cygnets each year, then one spring one swan was missing. She was found dead nearby, having swallowed a Dare-Devil snagged under the water from a fisherman. Since then we have had other pairs on the lake and they have continued to thrive, although they do suffer from lead poisoning when they feed on the bottom of ponds where duck and goose hunters shoot and occasional fishing lure problems.
Originally all of the swans were tagged with neck bands easily readable from a distance. With the program’s success, an estimated 7000 WI birds in 2021, tagging has been stopped and swans are thriving. When you see a tagged swan, like our local neighbor 86K, you can be sure it is an older one, who may be nearing the life span of 20-25 years.
This December, living adjacent to Bass Lake, is quite wonderful, the night filled with the subdued gurgling conversations of 100s of geese and swans, reassuring themselves the family groups are nearby and enjoying a mild winter. If you want to see them 10 am is a good time, north of Cushing on Hwy 87 about 3 miles. Take Evergreen Avenue to get a better view.
