Trumpeter swan

Trumpeter swans eat water plants.

They put their head under the water and their tail up in the air.

Adult trumpeter swans eat mostly plants: the stems, leaves, roots and seeds of water plants such as pondweeds, sedges, rushes and pond lilies. In winter they may also eat grass and leftover crops in fields.

To reach food in deeper water, a swan tips up, with its tail in the air and its long neck stretched straight down, and feels for food with its beak. Young swans, called cygnets, eat many insects and other small animals in their first weeks.

Audubon gives a diet of mostly plant material: stems, leaves and roots of aquatic plants including pondweed, sedges, rushes, arrowleaf, wild celery, bulrush and burreed, plus grasses and waste crops in winter. The ADF&G adds horsetail, water milfoil, widgeongrass and pond lily, and reports that in feeding experiments in Montana adults ate more than 20 pounds (about 9 kilograms) of moist aquatic vegetation a day.

Swans feed underwater, at or above the surface, and sometimes on land; in deeper water they upend, tail up and neck straight down, and find food by touch (Audubon). Cygnets need a high-protein diet of aquatic invertebrates in their first weeks, mainly the first 2 weeks after hatching, then shift to plants (ADF&G; Audubon).

Trumpeter swans can be upset by people near their nests.

Swans from the north fly south, often in V shapes.

Trumpeter swans are usually very sensitive to people. If there is a lot of human activity near a nest, a pair may not raise any young that year. In some parks and refuges where they are protected, swans may get used to people and let them come closer.

When they migrate, trumpeter swans fly mostly by day, often low and in V-shaped flocks.

Audubon says the trumpeter is ordinarily quite sensitive to human disturbance but may become used to people in protected parks and refuges; the ADF&G says high levels of human activity near a chosen nest site can lead to an unsuccessful breeding season. Pairs defend a territory around the nest, the male guarding while the female incubates (ADF&G).

Northern birds migrate mostly by day, often in low V-formations (Audubon). The IUCN codes the species as a full migrant and congregatory. Eggs are taken by bears, wolves, coyotes, wolverines, raccoons and common ravens, and bobcats, red foxes and golden eagles catch young and adult swans (ADF&G).

Long ago, hunters took so many swans that very few were left.

People protected them, and now there are many more.

Market hunters once hunted trumpeter swans for their meat and feathers. By the early 1900s the species was nearly gone, and in 1932 biologists knew of only 69 wild trumpeters (the swans in Alaska had not yet been found). Hunting of swans was stopped.

With protection, new reserves and swans raised and released in places where they used to live, trumpeter swans have come back. The trumpeter swan is now listed as least concern, and its numbers are going up.

BirdLife International assessed Cygnus buccinator as Least Concern for the IUCN Red List (assessed 21 August 2020, published 2021): an extremely large range, an increasing trend and about 76,000 individuals in 2015 (Groves 2017; Rees et al. 2019), roughly 50,000 mature birds. Generation length is 11.7 years.

Market hunting for meat and feathers led to the species being considered endangered by the early 1900s, and in 1932 only 69 wild birds were known (breeding trumpeters in Alaska were not discovered until 1954) (ADF&G). Recovery came with protection from hunting and disturbance, reserves, decades of captive breeding, and reintroductions that augment the Rocky Mountain and Interior populations, in places such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Ontario (IUCN; Audubon). The population is counted in the North American Trumpeter Swan Surveys, begun in 1968 and repeated every five years since 1975 (IUCN).