Re: Trumpeters MD/VA list

FRIEND55@aol.com
Thu, 28 Jan 1999 14:52:38 EST


There are no Trumpeter Swans on the VA list.  A Trumpeter Swan was seen at
Huntley Meadows Park  in Jan 1990.  It was a captive bird.

The bird was tagged with a number 86.  Number 86 was raised by captive
Trumpeter Swan parents in Aurora, Ontario near Toronto.  It was hatched June
1987.  On April 14, 1988, when it was about 10 months old, Harry Lumsden
winged-tagged it and took it south with its sibling, number 87, and released
it with 6 wild-caught Trumpeters from Comox, BC.  The release was from Long
Point, Ontario.  During that summer it was regularly seen in that area; it
moved around that fall and winter.  It was reported from a number of places as
far south as Galeton, PA( 6 April 1989).  Then it returned to Long Point on 18
April 1989. The next report was from Huntley Meadows.

Lumsden and others in Ontario were trying to re-establish trumpeters as
breeders in Ontario where they were common in the very early days of
settlement in the 1700s.

For historical records of Trumpeter Swans in Va see the article by David
Johnston published in the Virginia Natural History Society in 1996.

Charlotte Friend