Wild Swans

This chapter looks at how tundra swans arrived the day before Thanksgiving in the town of Island Lake in Wisconsin. Navigating by the stars and their memory of earth's moonlit landscape, they came, traveling from their summer breeding grounds in shallow pools, lakes, and rivers in the Arctic toward their winter residence in Chesapeake Bay and the marshes of Virginia and North Carolina. Tundra swans, which used to be called whistling swans for the sounds their wings make in flight, often travel in groups of several hundred. According to an Audubon guide, “they present a spectacular sight” when they make mass landings in places like the Niagara River. Like adolescents not quite ready to leave home, cygnets remain with the parent flock for at least a year, learning the route and where to feed and rest.