swans mate for life

Trumpeter swans are some of North America’s most elegant waterbirds.  The birds are all white with long flowing necks, they stand up to four feet tall with a large wingspan. The birds pledge as mates for life and are devoted parents. Signs at the lakes warn about shooting the protected birds, but early last week a bird showed up dead on Seven Mile lake with two .22 caliber slugs in it’s carcass.  The DNR is investigating.  Sandy Gillum is a local biologist who cares for the birds.  She talks with Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network about the dead swan. click here for live stream broadcast

The bird killed and found drifting on Seven Mile Lake was known to researchers as Trumpeter swan P73.  He was the breeding mate to female X88.  During the past several seasons they successfully reared their young.

 

Sandy Gillum helped band P73.

 

During the summer she watched the family. The swan young are known as cygnets.

 

“One incredible afternoon on a beach on another lake in the Nicolet P73 and it’s mate had it’s seven cygnets and she was in the lead and and he was in the rears and they marched their signets up on a beach and then she walked into the lake and the cygnets and the male turned to watch her and she taught them a preening lesson.  She cleaned her left wing and they all cleaned their right wing like a mirror image. And then she cleaned her right wing and they all cleaned their left wing. And she gave a little wiggle and they went off in line down the lake.”

 

Before this pair started breeding they  lived on a local wild rice lake. The pair wasn’t able to breed.  One day  the male showed up at the home of a lakefront property owner. The bird was blocking the front door, very aggressive and wouldn’t allow  the guy in the house.  So the man called biologist Sandy Gillum.

 

“And I went back and I said Hey Gus how come the bird is at your front door, he said, Yah, they come for wonder bread every day.” I said the female can’t lay up enough calcium to form an egg, if you give it wonder bread.  Let it go feed on the natural things the aquatic vegetation that it enjoys. By golly, the next year without the wonder bread she laid some eggs.”

 

During this past August my son Bart and I gathered wild rice on another Wisconsin Lake about a hundred fifty miles to the west.  We call this place  the Lake at the End of the River.  It’s undeveloped and abundant with wild rice. 

 

Three trumpeter swans, two parents and a cygnet,  protect this lake. One night sleeping in a tent we heard an alarming sound.  

 

At first I thought it was a yeti or a Sequatchie. But when we went down to the water, in the moonlight,  we saw  the swans near the wild rice bed warning the Canadian geese to back off. 

 

Neither Bart or I had ever heard a trumpeter swan before.

 

A few weeks later Sandy Gillum got word about trumpeter swan P73 on Seven Mile Lake getting shot.

 

How did you feel?

 

“uhm, boy, I was someplace between anger and tears. I watched the kids from Conserve School help band the birds…..(actual tears)  I think Joe Panci a teacher at Conserve School, once you hold a creature, hold a life in your hand, that magical moment you connect, you’ll connect and you’ll never forget it.”

 

DNR warden Pat Novesky is investigating the death.  Novesky thinks someone pulled up near the Seven Mile Lake dam and opened fire with  the .22 intentionally killing the swan.

 

Novesky adds that there’s been an increase in Wisconsin these types of thrill killings.

 

Warden Novesky’s phone number is 715 546 3742

 

I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network

to view another bird story click here

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