One pair of these hybrids was placed at Lake Elkhorn and Wilde Lake in
Columbia through the 1990s and into the early 2000s. One of the Elkhorn
birds was killed, and the county's only free-flying Mute Swan took up
house-keeping with it and produced eggs. These were collected by Dr. Sladen
and taken back to Airlie in VA. At some point after than, Sladen came and
took all the Trumplings home, and the Mute Swan succumbed to presumably
natural causes, or just old age. Regrettably, no one can seem to remember
the dates of all this, we really didn't pay attention to these swans,
sinceŠ. Except the Mute, that was countable.
The Columbia Trumplings were not free-flying, presumably pinioned.
Kurt Schwarz
Ellicott City, HowCo
Goawaybird at verizon dot net.
--
|