Listening to the . . . . SWANS!
With a cacophony of chortles, whoops, hoots, and hound-like howls, the tundra swans have once again swooped down from the north to stage briefly along the Upper Mississippi River. Did I mention whistles? That, too, which gave rise to the magnificent birds’ former name of whistling swan.
We spent this year’s Thanksgiving day on a delightful trek from Harpers Ferry, Iowa, northward to almost Brownsville, Minnesota, and managed to see thousands of the swans, whose five-foot-plus wing spans make them hard to miss. Several hundred were resting along Red Oak Road north of Harpers Ferry, where Wexford Creek enters a backwater of the Mississippi. They shared the shallows with hundreds of mallards and other migrating ducks.
The harsh QUACK-QUACK-QUACK of the mallards sometimes clashed with the more musical calls of the swans. Turn up your volume and click here for a short concert.swan music
Not content to see and hear a mere few hundred swans, we drove on north on Highway 26 to two Fish and Wildlife Service overlooks along the river between Reno and Brownsville, Minnesota. We were not disappointed. Who’s counting – but there appeared to be several thousand more swans scattered over the wetlands. Some birds loafed or fed within 100 feet of the shore, almost oblivious to a gathering of bird-watchers. They even paid little heed to a freight train that rumbled past
With temperatures dropping and ice forming on the backwaters, the swans soon may continue their migration from nesting ponds on the Arctic tundra to wintering areas around Chesapeake Bay and the east Coast. We’ll have to wait a year for another serenade.
I’m an Iowa farm kid who has never outgrown playing in the “crick.” Every kid should have that same opportunity to go outside and get muddy. And I can easily wax nostalgic about the wild places we have lost in my seven-plus decades on this planet. For more about where those times, people, and adventures have led me, here’s a link to my website.
You also might enjoy Cedar Creek Nature Notes by my friend Bob Leonard. (see below) Bob often roams the wilds of Cedar Creek, not far from his home in Bussey.
Thanks, Kathi!
It’s a spectacle we try to catch every year.
Larry
Thank you for this wonderful vicarious experience!