Trumpeter Swan

Identification

The trumpeter swan is the largest extant species of waterfowl, and both the heaviest and longest native bird of North America. Adults usually measure 138–165 cm (4 ft 6 in – 5 ft 5 in) long, though large males can exceed 180 cm (5 ft 11 in) in total length. The weight of adult birds is typically 7–13.6 kg (15–30 lb). Possibly due to seasonal variation based on food access and variability due to age, average weights in males have been reported to range from 10.9 to 12.7 kg (24 to 28 lb) and from 9.4 to 10.3 kg (21 to 23 lb) in females. It is one of the heaviest living birds or animals capable of flight, and, in terms of average mass, the heaviest flying bird in the world. Alongside the mute swan (Cygnus olor), Dalmatian pelican (Pelecanus crispus), kori bustard (Ardeotis kori), and Andean condor (Vultur gryphus), it is one of a handful to weigh in excess of 10 kg (22 lb) between the sexes, and one survey of wintering trumpeters found it averaged second only to the condor in mean mass. The trumpeter swan's wingspan ranges from 185 to 304.8 cm (6 ft 0.8 in to 10 ft 0 in), with the wing chord measuring 60–68 cm (24–27 in). The largest known male trumpeter attained a length of 183 cm (6 ft 0 in), a wingspan of 3.1 m (10 ft 2 in) and a weight of 17.2 kg (38 lb). It is the second heaviest wild waterfowl ever found, as one mute swan was found to weigh a massive 23 kg (51 lb), but it was unclear whether the latter swan was still capable of flight because of its bulk.<p>The adult trumpeter swan's plumage is entirely white. Like mute swan cygnets, the cygnets of the trumpeter swan have light grey plumage and pinkish legs, gaining their white plumage after about a year. As with the whooper swan, this species has upright posture and generally swims with a straight neck. The trumpeter swan has a large, wedge-shaped black bill that can, in some cases, be minimally lined with salmon-pink coloration around the mouth. The bill, measuring 10.5–12 cm (4.1–4.7 in), is up to twice the length of a Canada goose's (Branta canadensis) bill and is the largest of any waterfowl. The legs are gray-pink in color, though in some birds can appear yellowish gray to even black. The tarsus measures 10.5–12 cm (4.1–4.7 in).The mute swan, introduced to North America, is scarcely smaller. However, it can easily be distinguished by its orange bill and different physical structure (particularly the neck, which is typically held curved as opposed to straight in the trumpeter). The mute swan is often found year-around in developed areas near human habitation in North America, whereas trumpeters are usually only found in pristine wetlands with minimal human disturbance, especially while breeding. The tundra swan (C. columbianus) more closely resembles the trumpeter, but is significantly smaller. The neck of a male trumpeter may be twice as long as the neck of a tundra swan. The tundra swan can be further distinguished by its yellow lores. However, some trumpeter swans have yellow lores; many of these individuals appear to be leucistic and have paler legs than typical trumpeters. Distinguishing tundra and trumpeter swans from a distance (when size is harder to gauge) can be challenging without direct comparison but it is possible thanks to the trumpeter's obviously longer neck (the great length of which is apparent even when the swan is not standing or swimming upright) and larger, wedge-shaped bill as compared to the tundra swan.<p>Trumpeter swans have similar calls to whooper swans and Bewick's swans. They are loud and somewhat musical creatures, with their cry sounding similar to a trumpet, which gave the bird its name.

Taxonomy

The trumpeter swan was formally described in 1831 by the Scottish naturalist John Richardson in the fourth volume of American Ornithology; or, The Natural History of Birds Inhabiting the United States by Alexander Wilson and Charles Bonaparte. Richardson coined the current binomial name Cygnus buccinator. A description by Richardson was also published in Fauna Boreali-Americana, or, The Zoology of the Northern Parts of British America by William Swainson and Richardson but although the volume has 1831 printed on the title page, it was not published until 1832. The specific epithet is from Latin bucinator meaning "trumpeter"; bucina is the Latin word for a military trumpet. The trumpeter swan is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.

Scientific name

Cygnus buccinator

Authority

Richardson, 1831

Order

Anseriformes

Family

Anatidae

Genus

Cygnus

Range and habitat

Beginning in 1968, repeated in 1975, and then conducted at 5-year intervals, a cooperative continental survey of trumpeter swans was last conducted in 2015. The survey assesses trumpeter swan abundance and productivity throughout the entire breeding ranges of the three recognized North American populations: the Pacific Coast (PCP), Rocky Mountain (RMP), and Interior (IP) populations (see Figure). From 1968 to 2010 the population has increased from 3,722 to approximately 46,225 birds, in large part due to re-introductions to its historic range.<p>Their breeding habitat is large shallow ponds, undisturbed lakes, pristine wetlands and wide slow rivers, and marshes in northwestern and central North America, with the largest numbers of breeding pairs found in Alaska. They prefer nesting sites with enough space for them to have enough surface water for them to take off, as well as accessible food, shallow, unpolluted water, and little or no human disturbance. Natural populations of these swans migrate to and from the Pacific coast and portions of the United States, flying in V-shaped flocks. Released populations are mostly non-migratory.<p>In the winter, they migrate to the southern tier of Canada, the eastern part of the northwest states in the United States, especially to the Red Rock Lakes area of Montana, the north Puget Sound region of northwest Washington state; they have even been observed as far south as Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Historically, they ranged as far south as Texas and southern California. Since 1992, trumpeter swans have been found in Arkansas each November – February on Magness Lake outside of Heber Springs. In addition, there is a specimen in the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was shot by F. B. Armstrong in 1909 at Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. C. buccinator is therefore considered extirpated from Mexico. In early 2017, a juvenile trumpeter swan took up residence in the French Broad River in Asheville, North Carolina, marking the first such sighting in that part of the state.<p>Non-migratory trumpeter swans have also been artificially introduced to some areas of Oregon, where they never originally occurred. Because of their natural beauty, they are suitable waterfowl to attract bird watchers and other wildlife enthusiasts. Introductions of non-indigenous species in the Western states, for example through the Oregon Trumpeter Swan Program (OTSP), have also been met with criticism, but the introduction program argues that the perceived attractiveness of natural sites has priority over the original range of any given species.<p>Occasional sightings of trumpeter swans have occurred in the United Kingdom; while some of these are believed to be vagrants, most are presumed escapes into the wild. A single instance of the species breeding in the United Kingdom is reported from 1997, where two swans out of a group that escaped from a wildfowl collection at Apethorpe Palace, Northamptonshire raised a single cygnet on the River Nene.

Breeding range

NA : Alaska, w Canada and nc USA

Non-breeding range

w Canada and nw, c USA

Migration

Complete migrants

Conservation

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the trumpeter swan was hunted heavily, for game or meat, for the soft swanskins used in powder puffs, and for their quills and feathers. This species is also unusually sensitive to lead poisoning from ingesting discarded lead shot from fishing weights while young. The Hudson's Bay Company captured thousands of swans annually with a total of 17,671 swans killed between 1853 and 1877. In 1908 Edward Preble wrote of the decline in the hunt with the number sold annually dropping from 1,312 in 1854 to 122 in 1877. Sir John Richardson wrote in 1831 that the trumpeter "is the most common Swan in the interior of the fur-counties... It is to the trumpeter that the bulk of the Swan-skins imported by the Hudson's Bay Company belong." By the early twentieth century breeding trumpeter swans were nearly extirpated in the United States, with a remnant population of fewer than 70 wild trumpeters in remote hot springs in or near Yellowstone National Park. Surprising news came from a 1950s aerial survey of Alaska's Copper River when several thousand trumpeters were discovered. This population provided critical genetic stock to complement the tri-state (Montana/Idaho/Wyoming) population for re-introductions in other parts of the swan's historic range.<p>In 1918 Joseph Grinnell wrote that trumpeter swans once bred in North America from northwestern Indiana west to Oregon in the U.S., and in Canada from James Bay to the Yukon, and they migrated as far south as Texas and southern California. In 1960 Winston E. Banko also placed their breeding range as far south as Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, northwestern Indiana, but in Michigan turned this line northwards, placing a hypothetical eastern boundary up through Ontario to western Quebec and the eastern shore of James Bay. In 1984, Harry G. Lumsden posited that trumpeter swans may have been extirpated from eastern Canada by native people armed with firearms prior to the arrival of European explorers and noted archaeological remains of trumpeter swans as far east as Port au Choix, Newfoundland dating to 2,000 BCE. He cited historical observer records of what must have been breeding trumpeters, such as Father Hennepin's August report of swans on the Detroit River from Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie in 1679 and Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac's 1701 report of summering swans (July 23 – October 8) in the same area: "There are such large numbers of swans that the rushes among which they are massed might be taken for lilies." In the eastern United States the breeding range is potentially extended to North Carolina by the detailed report of John Lawson (1701) that "Of the swans we have two sorts, the one we call Trompeters...These are the largest sort we have...when spring comes on they go the Lakes to breed" versus "The sort of Swans called Hoopers; are the least."<p>Early efforts to reintroduce this bird into other parts of its original range, and to introduce it elsewhere, have had modest success, as suitable habitats have dwindled and the released birds do not undertake migrations. More recently, the population in all three major population regions have shown sustained growth over the past thirty-year period. Data from the US Fish and Wildlife Service show 400% growth in that period, with signs of increasing growth rates over time.<p>One impediment to the growth of the trumpeter swan population around the Great Lakes is the presence of a growing non-native mute swan population who compete for habitat.<p>One of the largest conservation sites for the trumpeter swan is located in Lois Hole Provincial Park. It is located adjacent to the renamed Trumpeter subdivision of Edmonton, Alberta, within Big Lake.<p>Thousands of swans migrate through the Chain Lakes along the Coeur d'Alene River basin in the Idaho Panhandle. Due to historic mining in the area, an average of 52 swans died each year 2005-2021 from lead exposure. There is an effort by local foundations, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the area and help limit lead exposure of swans migrating through.<p>Joe Johnson, a biologist for the W.K. Kellogg Bird Sanctuary, part of Michigan State University’s Kellogg Biological Station, obtained trumpeter swans from Alaska for re-introduction to Michigan beginning in 1986. The population has grown via continued re-introductions and organic growth to 756 birds by 2015. The native swans have benefited from removal of non-native mute swans by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources beginning in the 1960s, with a decline from 15,000 mute swans in 2010 to 8,700 in 2015.<p>As of 2013, the trumpeter swan is no longer listed as threatened in the state of Minnesota. In the winter months, a large population of trumpeter swans can be seen in the city of Monticello, Minnesota.<p>The Ontario Trumpeter Swan Restoration Group started a conservation project in 1982, using eggs collected in the wild. Live birds have also been taken from the wild. Since then, 584 birds have been released in Ontario. Despite lead poisoning in the wild from shotgun pellets, the prospects for restoration are considered optimistic. As of 2021, the population was between 2500 and 3000, was stable, and no longer relied on rehabilitation facilities.<p>Yellowstone provides only marginal habitat for trumpeter swans and therefore may only limited to occasional residents and wintering migrants. As of 2019, 27 trumpeter swans were observed in the park, 21 adults and 7 cygnets. Scientists[who?] attribute the decline in the park's population to the loss of nests and nesting sites because of spring flooding caused by climate change. In 2019, 4 young swans were released in Hayden Valley, and 35 cygnets have been released over 7 years, though none of these cygnets have since nested in the park.

Population trend

rising