caring for the swans
 

Pat's heart is with the swans

This one was taken by an intern at Hayward DNR a few years ago. I'm trying to count the eggs in a swan nest on a beaver pond at Edies Creek (east of Chippewa Lake in the Cheq NF). The female swan covered the eggs, so I'm trying to use the paddle to gently raise the covering to see the eggs. She is defending her nest from my approach. After I got my count, she followed me all the way to shore, up onto land and to the edge of the woods until she was satisfied she'd gotten rid of the intruder!     

Pat Manthey is an avian ecologist who cares for trumpeter swans because trumpeter swans were missing from Wisconsin and the DNR Bureau of Endangered Resources attempts to restore animals that were adversely impacted by humans.

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banding the swans

These photos, taken by Don Gillum (permission to use given via Sandy) show the scene of banding at Upper Ninemile Lake with the large crew of local volunteers, DNR staff, Forest Service staff and Conserve School students. Sandy Gillum (seated, recording data in both photos) organizes these crews. In these photos Linda Winn (DNR- Woodruff), a volunteer, and I are weighing a cygnet in a net. The cygnets were offspring of the shot P73. These photos, taken by Don Gillum (permission to use given via Sandy) show the scene of banding at Upper Ninemile Lake with the large crew of local volunteers, DNR staff, Forest Service staff and Conserve School students. Sandy Gillum (seated, recording data in both photos) organizes these crews. In these photos Linda Winn (DNR- Woodruff), a volunteer, and I are weighing a cygnet in a net. The cygnets were offspring of the shot P73. These photos, taken by Don Gillum (permission to use given via Sandy) show the scene of banding at Upper Ninemile Lake with the large crew of local volunteers, DNR staff, Forest Service staff and Conserve School students. Sandy Gillum (seated, recording data in both photos) organizes these crews. In these photos Linda Winn (DNR- Woodruff), a volunteer, and I are weighing a cygnet in a net. The cygnets were offspring of the shot P73.

 Trumpeter swans are making an impressive comeback in Wisconsin. There are almost a hundred nesting pair. Twenty years ago swans were almost wiped out.  The birds were hunted in the nineteenth century for their meat and feathers almost to extinction, but in the late nineteen eighties the Wisconsin DNR used clever tactics to help restore the elegant water birds.   Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network checks out a swan nesting lake with DNR avian ecologist Pat Manthey.

When we arrive the other day half the lake is iced over. Pat Manthey and I launch our kayaks, but the ice is too thick out in the middle to get to the island.  We head back to the landing to get a fire going to warm our hands.

 

A little while later we hear the swans call and see them set their wings near the bull rushes and wild rice on the other shore. 

 

Manthey runs back to truck to get her spotting scope.

 

“The Trumpeter swan family from Chippewa Lake just came flying into Chippewa Lake and landed over on the far side of the lake from us. First heard 'em honking as they came in.  could see that they were three birds, got the scope out.  It’s two adults and the cygnet. I’m sure it’s the family from here.”

This time of year they tend to move around seeking different food sources, places to eat. This lake is icing up so maybe they spent the night on a place where they could get out into open water which wasn’t as frozen”

 

We watch the swans through the spotting scope.

 

“And now they just swimming along together, eating, preening a little bit, being back on their lake.”

 

The elegant birds lifting their necks and paddling.

 

“It’s such a nice mesmerizing rhythm. It’s a lot like ricing where you just keep reaching and taping. Reaching and taping.   They’re just in and out, in and out, the whole family together.”

 

Manthey finds a decapitated ruffed grouse at the landing. The breast has been consumed.  She says it was probably hit by a goshawk.

 

Pat Manthey has always been interested in animals and wild places.

 

“I love being in nature.  I was always the child that just wanted to get out side and run and climb trees and sit and watch a rabbit for two hours. This is the perfect job for me. I love the time when I’m out here. Just watching and listening to all the sounds and sights our here. This is good and helps make up for the times I have to sit in front of the computer.”

 

We take turns looking through the scope.

 

“They found some good food source way on the other side of the lake.  They’re dipping their heads and their necks, in and out, in and out, in this beautiful rhythm, they’re so graceful.  One of the adults is doing what we call treading, he’s using his feet to loosen up vegetation on the bottom which then makes it easier, especially for the Cygnet to get at it.”

 

Things weren’t always quite so rosy for swans.  Twenty years ago there weren’t any wild swans in Wisconsin.  But their was some passion to restore them.  The DNR Bureau of Endangered Resources got some swan eggs from Alaska, hatched the eggs, and set about introducing the young  swans to the wild.

 

Pat Manthey and the DNR Bureau of Endangered Resources   worked on this restoration, teaching swans to become swans in Wisconsin,  using a swan decoy.

 

“But of course someone has to move the swan decoy, so students in wild life are always looking for field experience, so we hired interns to go out in float tubes with muskrat house blinds on the top, and they moved those decoys around, and they had enough biological knowledge to know where to take those cygnets to feed and to rest.  They had a little speaker on  the back of the decoy and a tape recorder connected to it, so they could play appropriate calls, so the little cygnets learned how to live in the wild that way.”

 

This lake doesn’t have any human homes on it. 

 

Nor will it for the conceivable future as the lake is surrounded by federal land.

 

The lake remains for the wild rice and the swans.

 

“They teach us the beauty of nature and the value of secure wild places, like Chippewa Lake here.  This is a perfect place. You and I are the only human beings here today.  There are ducks and we heard a few geese out there. There’s some coots.  A big flock of tundra swans just flew over.  We need these places. The critters need these places.  And we need these places for our spirit.”

 

 I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network.

web design by Sandy Lyon

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