Daily Updates
Tasha, Trumpeter Swans - UPDATE March 10, 2021
10 March 2021
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Trumpeter Swans
Trumpeter Swans
Last night at 9 PM, Pooch Pal managed to capture 9 minutes and 20 seconds of video of Tasha vigorously playing with a log and later some sticks and also climbing the white pine Cub Tree. Tasha obviously has come through the winter with fat and nutrients to spare and an attitude of fun and action. Good to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIb856Qg00Q People will be guessing how much she weighs and when the official date of emergence is.
Here is a 4 minute 37 second video of Spanky playing around and having a bite or two of fresh fallen snow.
https://youtu.be/n2OfG7RkVsU (recorded after Dr. Rogers wrote this update)
Today, on this very overcast day before the snowstorm, Donna and I made out annual visit to the Shagawa River to see the returning Trumpeter Swans. We feel privileged to see them and think about the work by so many to rescue these magnificent birds from the brink of extinction. According to the Trumpeter Swan Society, these birds that once covered much of North America were severely depleted in number by subsistence hunting and over 125 years of commercial swan skin harvest. Many thousands of skins were shipped to Europe between 1772 and the late 1800’s.
In Minnesota beginning in the 1980’s, many people joined a campaign to bring back these awesome birds led my friend and hero Carrol Henderson and funded by Income Tax contributions to the DNR’s Nongame Wildlife Program that Carrol headed.
Across North America, trumpeter swans have increased from 3,700 in 1968 at the time of the first range-wide survey to 63,000 in 2015.
Today, 18 of them, mostly already paired, were in a short open part of the river.
It’s 9 PM. The snowstorm has started.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
