I was working outside in the garden early on Sunday morning 4/14 when I received a text from NH birder Steve Mirick that the Trumpeter Swan was continuing in Candia. Trumpeter Swan? What Trumpeter Swan? I hadn’t seen any posts about what might be the first modern-day record of Trumpeter Swan in NH. I came inside to check e-mails, and with some research noticed that the bird was first spotted the day before but initially reported as a Tundra Swan. I don’t need Tundra for my NH list so it didn’t pop up in an eBird Needs Alert. And with less people using the listserves, it wasn’t until the text the next day that the news got out in a big way.
Now I needed to free up some time to chase after the Swan. Often Trumpeters will stick around for a while, so I wasn’t too worried that I couldn’t leave right away to chase after it. Instead I planned to give it a try right after church. I did a bit more research and found that the bird was being seen in the wetlands of the Abe Emerson Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary, and then downloaded a map of the trails at the site. That was just a 45-minute drive away – less than half the distance of most of my normal New England chases. I coordinated with NH birder David Donsker and it sounded like we would both arrive at about the same time. More eyes the better.
By the time I left church there were a couple more posts, including photos of the bird swimming close by the photographer. And while in route I called another NH birder David Deifik to make sure he knew about the bird. He had just seen the Swan but it wasn’t in view at the time. So I was optimistic though it might take a bit of searching.
I arrived at about 1 PM just as yet another NH birder Davis Finch got to the site (after all it could be a first recent NH record – everyone was descending on the site!). Davis said he saw the bird as he passed by the marsh on Route 101; it was same story from David Donsker who had just arrived. But stopping on the highway is likely to be frowned upon by local police, so we all started our searches from the trails in the sanctuary. After about 20 minutes of increasingly anxious searching Davis and I finally spotted the Swan at the far southern end of the wetlands. We were on the northeastern water’s edge about 1,000 ft away, and the bird was at least partially obscured, so the sighting wasn’t the best. But we were able to get occasional views of the head/bill shape to ensure the ID and eliminate Tundra Swan.
Now the question was whether this bird could be countable in NH. There is apparently one historical NH record of Trumpeter Swan, based on an account in "History of New Hampshire" by Jeremy Belknap written in 1792. As a result, this species is on the NH state list based solely on the summary contained in that 200-year-old book. But since then, Trumpeters had been extirpated from virtually all of their former range, and in fact hunted to near extinction. That was until very successful re-introduction programs were begun in the 1980s in several Midwest states and Ontario. This species is now successfully breeding in many locations throughout this region, including birds breeding as close as the Finger Lakes region of NY.
Not surprisingly Trumpeters are showing up in increasing frequency in New England, and recent sightings have been deemed to be countable from viable re-introduced populations by the rare bird committees of VT, CT, RI, and MA. At least one set of photos of the Candia bird showed that it was not banded, and had no wingtags, so the NH bird is not likely to be an escapee, and most likely from these re-introduced populations. It will be up to the NH Rare Bird Committee to decide if this bird is indeed countable, but it would sure seem that based on the recent countable records elsewhere in New England, that the Committee members will decide to count this record as well.
If accepted by the NHRBC it would be number 370 for my NH list. In my statebird map below, the 18 dark shaded states are those where I’ve seen Trumpeter Swan, including several midwestern states associated with the re-introduction program. The cross-hatched states are those where this species is regular though I haven’t caught up with it yet. I’ve also seen it in 2 Canadian provinces – BC and ON. And with the increasing eastern populations Trumpeters will undoubtedly become regular in additional eastern states and provinces in the near future.
No comments:
Post a Comment