Tundra Swan Invasion Was A Sight To See Seeing about 2,000 tundra swans recently at the head of North Bay in northern door County set a personal record and provided Roy and Charlotte Lukes with a "thrill of a lifetime." Lucky for many people, there are around 8,600 species of birds in the world. Birders, regardless of where on Earth they may be, one exception being at or near the South Pole, can never be bored. This morning with the gusty wind scattering dried leaves in all directions, Charlotte and I worked at hauling firewood from our north woods to the front yard where it will dry for a year or more before being used. I had to go out to the garden shed to fetch something and along the way, no more than five feet above my head, there was my first golden-crowned kinglet of the year. The tiny sprite appeared to totally disregard me as it hunted for small insects in a white spruce near the west end of the garden path. It was no more than a half-hour later that both of us saw another golden-crowned kinglet, this time in a small white pine right next to our wood pile. What never ceases to amaze us is the fact that this bird, the next smallest bird to the ruby-throated hummingbird in Wisconsin, is known to occasionally spend some winters in northeastern Door County. How a bird this small can possibly endure 25 degrees below zero F. boggles the mind. It was only a few days ago that we had enjoyed watching one of the largest birds that migrates through our state, the tundra swan. Our friend, Toby the plumber, called me in the afternoon, all excited. He had been doing some work in a cottage along the western shore of North Bay and, as he described over the phone, "Roy, there must be over 400 swans up near the north end of North Bay." It’s no exaggeration for me to say that I’d believe Toby most faithfully. This was the third caller of the day reporting swans. I had responded to the first two, checked both of them out, and got the best pictures of the majestic white birds that I could. A report of 400+ swans in one flock was simply too good to resist, so up I went to see for myself. Toby had considerably underestimated because I could easily count well over a thousand. Even though the flock was not really close to shore, I was able to get some images through my spotting scope using a digital camera. The combination of a 20X eyepiece and a 3X internal telephoto in the camera amounted to around a 2000 mm telephoto lens. They call this relatively new technique "digiscoping," actually quite easy. It was 4 P.M. by the time I arrived home and the first thing I asked Charlotte was, "How would you like to see over 1000 tundra swans?" We were on our way in less than a minute! Neither Toby’s nor my estimate met with Charlotte’s approval. She quite meticulously went to work starting at one end of the gigantic flock and ending at the other. Her best educated guess was around 2000! This spring has been the 48th year in which I’ve been thrilled to the annual migration of these awe some waterfowl, and this flock of 2000 was by far the largest I have ever experienced. We spread the word to several of our friends when we arrived home but unfortunately the flock took off that late afternoon or during the night. Not a single swan remained at North Bay the next morning. The largest of the sexes, the males, weigh in at between 10 and 18 pounds, are between 47-58 inches long having a wingspan between six and seven feet. What always fascinates us is watching these elegant birds take off. They are so heavy that they must flap and paddle along the surface for some distance before becoming airborne. Equally exciting is seeing them come in for a landing. They sail downward with wings cocked, cupped to catch the air, and the second before alighting their legs are thrust for ward with their feet often spread upward to break the speed of their landing, appearing to water ski a short distance. Swans, compared to ducks, have longer necks, proportionally shorter legs and larger feet, and spend more time on water. Not traveling with the swans at North Bay, but mixed in with them, were black ducks, mallards, blue-winged teals, pintails and American wigeons, formerly called baldpates. If you think the tundra swan is a large waterfowl, consider the trumpeter swan. Great efforts are being undertaken to reintroduce to Wisconsin these largest of all waterfowl in North America. A large male can weigh more than 30 pounds and have a wingspan of as much as 10 feet. The length of one of these birds, from the tip of its tail to the tip of its beak, is about six feet. Telling the adult tundra from the trumpeter swan is not always easy. Both are white and large and sport black bills. Some of the tundra adults have small yellow patches near the base of their bills, but not all adults have this fieldmark. The base of the tundra’s beak is quite straight across the forehead while that of the trumpeter angles downward into a "V" shape. Look at the profile of the front of a trumpeter’s head and its bill and you will clearly see that it is quite straight, consid erably straighter than that of a tundra’s. If you would be so fortunate to hear both of these birds, the difference would be as clear as night and day. The tundra swan has a fairly high, tooting or whistling call. In fact its old name used to be whistling swan. A trumpeter swan has a very low, far-reaching horn-like quality to its voice that is unmistakable. The Seney national Wildlife Refuge in the U.P. of Michigan has a small well-established flock of trumpeter swans, an excellent place to get good looks at them. The first flight of the young doesn’t take place until they are between 100-120 days old, so mid to late summer is a fine time to visit this great refuge where viewing sandhill cranes, ducks, loons, trumpeter swans, ospreys and bald eagles, all of which nest there, is surprisingly easy, often from the comfort of your car. Our lives without birds, including the golden-crowned kinglets and tundra swans of early spring, would be sorely incomplete! This column appeared in the Door County Advocate on 04/10/2004. © Copyright 2004 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.