The trumpeter swans afford us much pleasure in observing them each day because, although the job of feeding them is officially in my name, the whole family shares in both the work and the enjoyment involved in caring for the huge birds.
As we walk down on Big Lagoon a number of birds get impatient, take off from the feedplace and fly up, circling the person coming to feed them and trumpeting all the way as they fly back. Sometimes a bunch of them come walking up the ice to meet us. They advance a short distance, then sit down on the ice, tuck their big webbed feet up under their wings and thick feathers to warm them, after a few minutes, will rise and walk some more. They keep doing this until they reach us. After we pass they all turn and start the slow march back, with stops to warm their feet.
When winter is more than half-done, and sometimes earlier, the swans commence to fight and court on another. There is a lot of noise or singing and whooping as they chase each other around. Some warm days they will chase and court as much as they eat. Then they get out on the ice and preen themselves. In courtship two adult swans of opposite sex face each other and bob their heads up and down while raising their wings to half mast, then fluttering them, all the time gabbling and whooping. When they begin, their heads are high as they can be held. As they duck them down, either in unison or alternately, their heads are lowered right down until the bills almost rest on their breasts, then up go the heads as high as possible again. When the heads are down the long sinuous necks describe an almost perfect, nearly closed letter C. Their trumpetings can be heard over a distance of a couple miles on a clear day.
Occasionally on a cold moonlit night when the timber is cracking and the ice booms, all the adults in the flock get together and stage a concert. It is the most thrilling thing I have ever heard, aside from a pack of wolves in chorus. The wolves are spine-tingling while the trumpeter music is majestic and harmonious. The cygnets keep quiet while the adults sing as their voices are not fully developed until they are at least 18 months old. The trumpeters' calls are very difficult to describe. Although I have heard them thousands of times, I cannot think of words to describe adequately the various calls they can produce. The tone, timbre and quality of their trumpeting is more sonorous than a trumpet. The bird's windpipe winds around and through his sternum and bends sharply over a ridge of bone to form a loop before continuing to his lungs. The more common whistling swan does not have this loop and his voice is sort of a soft squeak. It is therefore believed the extra loop is responsible for the quality and volume of the trumpeter's call. . . |
