“Sanitized for Your Protection” - Second MA Sighting of Trumpeter Swan, Milford, MA, February 2019

Have you ever checked into a motel and noticed a little ring of paper around the toilet seat printed with these words – “Sanitized for Your Protection”?  My good birding friend David Deifik has used this phrase though in a very different context.  Consider the situation most all of us have been in where, although we have a certain bird on our life lists, in the back of our mind we might question the ID, or maybe we just want to get a better view of that species in general.  Once we do get that more definitive view of the species in question we feel much better about having that bird on our list.  Hence our lists have been - “Sanitized for Your Protection”.  

I had an opportunity to “sanitize” my MA statelist a bit in February 2019 when a Trumpeter Swan was spotted with Mute Swans at the Milford Pond in Milford.  I already had this species on my MA list based on a sighting on 3/21/04 in Northampton, MA.  Undoubtedly both the 2004 and the 2019 birds were directly or indirectly associated with the re-introduction efforts occurring in the Great Lakes.  But it was only when I started reading about the reports of the 2019 bird that I realized that the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee (MARC) did not accept the 2004 bird because it was felt that the Great Lakes population was not yet self-sustaining.  So although there was no question about the ID of the 2004 bird, it was still not countable on your MA statelist if you wanted to “play by the rules” so to speak.  Instead, the first MA record of Trumpeter Swan to be accepted by MARC was a bird from Charlton in May 2018.  So if I wanted sanitize the Trumpeter Swan record on my MA list I needed to go see the Milford bird.  Assuming this bird ends up being accepted by MARC that is. 

The Trumpeter had been spotted daily since January 28, often associating with several Mute Swans.  And even though the pond froze over during that time, the Trumpeter Swan remained at the pond and was quite reliable.  Most importantly it was indicated in one post that sightings before 2018 weren’t countable, otherwise I would have continued to have a non-countable bird on my MA list.  So on February 5th I made the short trek to Milford Pond, followed the directions to park behind the NRG building on the western side of the pond, and then walked down toward Clark Island.  A couple hours earlier there was a post that the Trumpeter was sitting on the ice north of the island with a pair of Mute Swans, so I was quite optimistic. 

As I neared the island I got a glimpse of Swans out on the ice.  A quick binoc view yielded 3 birds – I likely had the Trumpeter and 2 Mutes but all were sleeping.  I needed a better view.  I walked along the trail on Clark Island and got to a spot where I was closest to the Swans.  From there scope views confirmed 2 Mute Swans now walking around on the ice a bit in the distance, and one closer Swan which was still asleep on the ice.  Undoubtedly this was the Trumpeter but I had to be sure – after all I was there to “sanitize” my list.  Here is a phone-scoped photo of the bird as it slept.

After about 10 minutes I still had no view of the third bird’s head and bill to make a definitive ID.  I started to try to compare sizes since Trumpeters are often a bit bigger than Mutes, but the birds weren’t very close together so comparisons weren’t easy.  Then I realized that the necks of the two Mutes were a bit yellower than that of the sleeping bird – but was that definitive?  Then finally the sleeping bird awoke and raised its head just barely enough to give me a view of the base of the bill – it was all black eliminating Mute Swan.  It also eliminated Tundra, though no Tundras had been reported at the site.  I had my bird – after 15 years Trumpeter Swan was “sanitized for your protection” on my MA list. 

Back in 2004, I counted Trumpeter Swan as #365 on my MA list.  Instead I should have added it in 2019 as #414.  That is assuming MARC ends up accepting this bird in Milford. 

My statebird map for Trumpeter Swan is inserted below.  The shaded states are those where I've seen this species; cross-hatched states are those in which this species is regular but I don't yet have it for that state list.  Most of my sightings in the Midwest and East have been after the Great Lakes re-introduction efforts.  I know my VT sighting in 2017 was countable and accepted by the VT Bird Records Committee.  Hopefully all the others are countable as well, or I’ll have to “sanitize” a bunch of those lists too.