Heavyweight flyers

This is one true Big Bird! The trumpeter swan is 

... the heaviest living bird native to North America, (and) also the largest extant species of waterfowl ... 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. ... second only to the condor in mean mass.(Wikipedia)

An adult trumpeter usually can weigh from 8 to about 12 kilos, although one male weighed in at 17.2 kilos. His wings measured 3 metres tip to tip, twice the wingspan of a Canada goose (and he was twice the goose's maximum weight, too.)

Getting airborne requires a lumbering takeoff along a 100-yard runway.(AllAboutBirds)

No wonder they like big, wide, open fields.

Flooded potato farm, as seen from the side of the road. 8 swans this side of the field, more in the distance.

Two adult swans. The ducks are mallards and wigeons.

Looking through roadside weeds. The smaller, greyish swan is probably a tundra swan.

Trumpeter adults have black bills. The youngsters are greyish and have some pink markings on the bill. Tundra swans, also a native swan, are half the weight of the trumpeters and have a mostly pink bill, with black at the tip and the base.

Eating a potato.

Grain crops, including corn and barley, and tubers such as potatoes and carrots also make up part of the wintertime diet. (AllAboutBirds)

In some areas, up to 90 percent of the wetlands and estuaries that once belonged to trumpeters have been destroyed by human activity. Those that remain have been depleted. (TheWalrus)

So they have turned to agricultural lands; gleanings left behind after harvesting, flooded fields, forage fields, and sometimes, fields of winter rye planted just for them, so they can head north in the spring, fat and healthy and ready to raise a new family. 

In 1993, the trumpeter swan population was down to 77 individuals in Canada, and only 50 in the US. Thanks to careful tending, the numbers have rebounded, and now there are about 64,000. For a few years, I was able to help with the weekly swan count in this area. I still receive a weekly report of the count; over 600 were reported last week in the Comox valley. (Dec. 3 update: this week, the total was 1827.)

Tundra or juvenile trumpeter? Nice to see youngsters; a growing population.

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¡Un auténtico Big Bird! El cisne trompetero:

... el pájaro más pesado originario de norteamérica, y también la especie de aves acuáticas que existen en el tiempo presente más grande ... De los pájaros existentes ahora, es uno de los más pesados capaces de volar, y considerando su peso promedio, el pájaro capaz de volar más pesado del mundo entero. ... solamente superado por el cóndor en peso medio.(Wikipedia)

Un cisne trompetero normalmente pesa entre 8 y 12 kilos, aunque un macho llegó a pesar 17,2 kilos. Sus alas se extendían 3 metros, el doble de la envergadura de un ganso canadiense (y pesó el doble del peso máximo de este ganso, también.)

Lanzarse al aire necesita un despegue torpe a lo largo de una pista de cerca de 90 metros de largo.(AllAboutBirds)

Con razón escogen campos grandes y abiertos.

1. Una plantación de papas inundada, vista desde el camino. Hay 8 cisnes en este lado, más en la distancia.
2. Dos cisnes adultos. Los patos son ánades reales y silbones americanos.
3. El cisne gris, más chico, probablemente será un cisne de la tundra. Los cisnes trompeteros adultos tienen el pico negro; los jóvenes son algo grises y tienen manchas color de rosa en el pico. Los cisnes de la tundra, que son también una especie indígena, pesan la mitad de los trompeteros y su pico es mayormente color de rosa, con el punto y la base negros.
4. Comiendo una papa.
5. O cisnes de la tundra o cisnes trompeteros juveniles.

Cultivos de cereales, incluyendo maiz y cebada, y tubérculos tales como las papas y las zanahorias también son parte de la dieta en invierno. (AllAboutBirds)

En algunas regiones, hasta el 90 porciento de los humedales y los estuarios que en tiempos antaños les pertenecían a los cisnes trompeteros han sido destruidos por las actividades humanas. Los que persisten hasta el presente se han empobrecidos. (TheWalrus)

Por consiguiente, los cisnes se han recurrido a campos agricultores; comiendo restos abandonados después de la cosecha, campos inundados, cultivos forrajeros, y, a veces, campos sembrados de centeno de invierno, estos sembrados a propósito para los cisnes, permitiéndoles regresar al norte en la primavera sanos y gordos y listos para anidar. 

En el año 1993, la población de cisnes trompeteros se había reducido a 77 individuos en Canadá y solamente 50 en los Estados Unidos. Gracias a cuidados intensivos, el número de cisnes ahora ha llegado a unos 64.000. Durante unos años, yo tuve la oportunidad de asistir con el conteo semanal de cisnes en esta región. Todavía me mandan el reporte semanal; contaron más de 600 cisnes en el valle de Comox la semana pasada. (Añadiendo; esta semana, el 3 de diciembre, hubo 1827 trompeteros.)

Trumpeters!

 Trumpeter swans! With a zillion or so mallards and wigeons. And potatoes.

Cygnus buccinator. 

More tomorrow; couldn't wait to post at least the first photo.

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¡Cisnes trompeteros! Con patos; ánades reales y silbones americanos. Y papas.

Primera foto; las demás las dejo para mañana.

Rainy day in the slough, with distant birds

The weather is going to turn rough; they're saying we'll have winds up to 100 km/h today. For now, it's just raining.

Before the rain got going in earnest, I went down the Salmon Point/Woodhus Slough trail to look for mushrooms again, with no luck. But two flocks of trumpeter swans flew overhead, discussing the weather as they went. I forgot about mushrooms.

The second group. The first group was about 60 noisy swans strong.

Heading back, near sunset (but there was no sun), I took the summer trail along the slough floor; last chance, because the water is already rising, and it will soon be covered.

The water begins to rise. Last time I was here, this was dry. In mid-winter, the water will cover all the grasses and sedges.

Slough bottom, with rose hips.

Birds forage busily among the trees here, eating old berries and rotting fruit. I saw towhees, sparrows, juncos, chickadees, bouncing happily through the tangled branches, mostly too dark to see clearly on this dark, rainy afternoon.

Junco in a tree with lichen

The water will rise soon. The berries will drown. The small birds will move to higher ground. And the mallards will move in, eating the summer vegetation, as it rots underwater.

Distant white birds

The Comox Valley Naturalists Society holds a monthly meeting with a guest speaker. I drove down last Sunday night, to hear a lecture on plankton and the herring cycle by Dr. John Tayless. Very interesting; I filled a page with scribbled notes.

Before the main event, there was a report from the annual Trumpeter Swan count, and an invitation to join them. At the break, I signed up, and this morning joined a swan counter on the northernmost section of the counting area, about 20 minutes from my door. We counted 85 birds in one field, another 75 in various other fields, all too far away for my little camera. I took photos anyhow.

Typical field. The swan spread out, and occasionally lift off in small groups of two or three, heading for the next field, or a pond.

Trumpeter swans are the largest existing waterfowl in the world, twice the length of the snow geese I mistook them for a week ago, twice the weight of the similar Tundra swan. That word, "existing", is important: back in 1933, they had been hunted almost to extinction. By then, they were down to only 77 swans in Canada, 50 in the US. but a restoration program has been very successful. The east coast of Vancouver Island is along one of their flyways, and by 1990, the annual count turned up 1000 swans. A recent count found 60,000 in the Comox Valley, just south of Campbell River.

Four swans heading for the pond. An eagle is circling overhead on the left. Flocks of assorted ducks and gulls also frequent the ponds; good hunting grounds for an eagle.

In the fall, I'm told, the swans eat high-sugar crops from farmers fields; potatoes, carrots, corn, etc. The farmers, of course, are not pleased with this. Several methods of scaring the swans off these fields have not worked, but the most recent solution has been to plant crops in other areas, in grassland and wetland, crops that are more attractive to the swans. Good thinking.

The tail end of a pond. Later, a flock of dark ducks and more swans dropped in. I like the sun on the trees, turning them yellow.

The swans here are on their way through. By April, they'll have moved farther north, mostly to Alaska, where they will nest and raise their families. They'll be back here next winter.

The eggs are quite possibly the largest of any flying bird alive today. ... The eggs average 73 millimetres (2.9 in) wide, 113.5 millimetres (4.5 in) long, and weigh about 320 grams (11.3 oz) (Wikipedia)

A few birds in the field we got nearest to. Still too far for my pocket camera.

Bonus! We saw more than birds on our circuit; I took this photo from the car window as we passed:

Island Bison Farm.

The count goes on until the end of March. I'll be joining them every Tuesday for the duration.

Yes, it's spring!

My snowdrops are blooming. The shrub along the fence has come out in tiny green leaf buds. And it's raining. And raining. And raining. Looks like spring is here.

I went out for a drive in the rain and fog to look for more spring goodies, and found fat pussy willows hanging over flooded ditches, willows all decked out in yellow-green, a couple of trees dressed in white blossoms, eagles hanging out in pairs at the top of bare snags.

At the edge of the Comox valley, I began seeing snow geese trumpeter swans*. They're spread out, a couple or three dozen in each of many fields.

Acres of green veggies, and no mud!

From the side of the highway.

I left the highway and drove up and down farm roads, back roads, dead-end roads, a long, meandering circuit that, after an hour, led me back to the highway and home. I saw many swans, but none close enough for a good photo in the rain. But on a short gravel road, a deer and her half-grown kid crossed in front of me, ran a little ways into the bush, and turned to watch me.

It's quite dark in there, in the rain and near sunset. Her eyes reflected my flash back at me.

The eyes seemed too bright in relation to the flash; the light diminishes quickly with a bit of distance, and the deer were deep in the bush. I Googled deer eyes to see why. Turns out that they see the light twice.

The structure that causes glowing eyes in deer, dogs, cats and other animals is the tapetum lucidum. This is a layer of specially adapted cells behind the retina that reflect light. When light passes into a deer's eye, it strikes the many rod receptors in his retina, helping him identify the movement of potential predators. The tapetum gives his receptors a second shot at those rays of light, however, reflecting them back through the retina and doubling the chances of any rod receptor gleaning information from the outside world. When a bright light shines on the tapetum, it reflects a bright glow that can be seen from a distance. (From Animals.mom.me)

Deer are more active after dark; they often sleep during the daytime, so their eyes are more adapted to low light levels. They have larger pupils than we do, and these can expand to almost fill the visible eye. In all the photos I took of these deer, the entire eye glowed.

The youngster, about half his mother's height, but old enough to have lost his baby spots. His eye glows bluish; his mother's have a yellowish/red border. This could be due to the angle of the light.

Coming home in a downpour, I noticed that the tide was lower than I've seen it yet this year. Another sign of spring.

*Update: I've been told they are trumpeter swans. I was surprised: they had those long necks, but I had thought that the swans were still rare. Now I've been reliably informed that there are about 60,000 on this flyway.

Roadside shenanigans

The trumpeter swans are back again, and as usual in our part of the delta, prefer the muddiest of fields with a peaceful backdrop of machinery, piles of gravel and construction materials. I walked halfway around their field to a bus stop which local commuters have enhanced with a couple of sturdy office chairs. By standing on a chair and half dangling off the bus stop sign (Good thing no bus stopped for me!), I managed to get a background more to my taste.

Swans and Mount Baker, far away.

The swans don't care about scenery; they see enough of it in their migrations. What they're interested in are the roots left behind after the fall harvest, and the fresh, new sprouts of weeds still hidden in the muck.

Ankle deep in damp mud. On the left, a mallard rests in the shade under a swan's belly.

Very bad photos of good birds

We weren't birding, this Saturday; we had other things to do. We voted in our local elections, then headed for a bi-annual pottery sale in Tsawwassen. Afterward, we would have lunch in Beach Grove, and then, weather permitting, go for a short walk. All very organized.

The voting went quickly. But the procedure was different than usual; they gave us pages to fill out by connecting arrows, using their pens, not ours. And those pages were fed into a machine that swallowed them and left the worker with the folder only. She said it had counted our votes already. I'm not so sure I trust these contraptions.

On to the pottery sale!

Except that we got side-tracked. On the far side of a plowed field, we saw a small flock of white birds. We turned off and parked on the farm road.

Trumpeter Swans

Too far away for good photos; why don't they come this way?


Oh. They've got a windfall: plowed-up carrots. Do swans eat carrots? It seems that they do.

They honked constantly. It sounded like a 5-year-old's birthday party, with all the kids at once blowing those silly plastic horns.

On to the pottery sale!

With a slow-down to check out an eagle's nest by the highway. No eagle there now. (There was when we were heading home.) Slow-down to look at a blue heron in the ditch, another for a flock of starlings that rose in a sudden cloud when we passed. Slowdown for Laurie to get these ducks in an artificial pond. (Two years ago, it was a bare puddle; then there were weeds, now grasses. Ducks are a new development.)

The car is moving. Not the ducks.

There were no birds at the pottery sale. Not even pottery birds.

It was late, and the weather was beautiful, so we stopped at Tim Horton's for soup, bought a couple of bags of bird seed at Bosley's for my feathery family at home, and went on to the beach at Beach Grove. The tide was in, the birds were out. Way out.

Mixed rafts of waterfowl. Too far away to identify.

A pair of loons swam close to the shore at one point, teasing us by diving in unison, halving the chances we got at photographing them. (Laurie got a beautiful shot of two circles on the blue wavelets, circles where two loons* had been when he pressed the shutter.)


Caught them, just after they surfaced. Didn't wait to focus.

Later, in the distance, we heard them laughing.

On the chimney of one of the houses, a seagull posed. At least, until he saw a camera pointed in his direction. Then:

Mooning us.

Looks like he's standing on wingtips.

Back into Beach Grove for coffee and tea. On the way, this Downy teased us, hopping from the backside of one branch to the far side of the next.


Caught him, anyhow. Once, and blurred.

Time to head home. For us and these crows; they were part of a long stream (river, even) of crows going west, as usual at this time of the night. I've watched them many a time, tried to count occasionally; there must be several hundreds, maybe even thousands, wherever it is that they go home to in the evenings.


So much for not birding.

*I was wrong. They were mergansers, Seabrooke says. I should have looked more closely, rather than relying on the clue of the laughing loons.
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