As I was driving around the farms and countryside near the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge this afternoon, I came across a flock of swans in a cornfield.
After a few minutes of watching them through my 600mm camera lens, I was pleasantly surprised to realize I was watching a flock of trumpeter swans.
It seemed a bit odd for a flock of tundra swans to be casually hanging out in a farm field this time of year.
I know tundra swans do, on occasion, leave the refuge wetlands to forage in agricultural fields, but it is the exception and not the rule when it happens if truth be told.
Usually, tundra swans stick to the wetlands of the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and nearby state and private-land marshes, feeding upon aquatic roots and vegetation and rarely leave to feed elsewhere.
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So when I saw a couple dozen swans feeding in a cornfield, I was a little bit perplexed on seeing so many swans in such an unusual place.
Then I recalled last year’s sightings of a flock of trumpeter swans in almost the exact same area.
For several weeks last year, I watched that same flock of trumpeter swans come, day after day, and feed in a harvested wheat field.
Trumpeter swans do migrate through Utah in the fall.
In fact, it is becoming more and more common to find trumpeter swans here in Utah during fall migration but it’s not without some controversy, mind you.
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Utah has a swan hunt, namely for the tundra swan, but trumpeter swans are also harvested during the hunt due to how vastly similar the two species are when on the wing.
But there is, however, a catch to the Utah swan hunt with regards to the trumpeter swan.
Hunters are required to take their swans to a check station to be identified, and when the allowed amount of trumpeter swans are taken, this year it is 20 birds, the whole swan hunt is closed down for the season.
Last year, the Utah swan hunt closed early because the 20 trumpeter swan quota was reached before the end of the swan season.
This year, as of last Saturday when I stopped by the refuge office, at least 10 trumpeter swans were taken so far this year in northern Utah.
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It seems that more and more trumpeter swans are migrating through Utah for some reason.
It is not known where, in fact, these trumpeter swans are coming from, but I have heard biologists do take feather samples from some of the trumpeter swans to try and genetically match them to a breeding population in order to help determine where they are coming from.
Are trumpeter swan populations increasing or are they just shifting migration routes due to how the climate is changing?
That is a question nobody has an answer for as of yet, but one thing is for sure, more and more trumpeter swans are being found here in Utah during fall migration.
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