CHAPTER XXXII.

_Our Native Swans._

The swans we usually see in our parks throughout America are not natives of this country, and a great many people are not acquainted with the fact that we still have hundreds of real, beautiful, wild swans at large in this country.

Now in North America there are only two varieties of native swans, the trumpeter and the whistling swans. They are both pure white. Often we hear of a flock of swans being seen with some dark ones among them; these are young birds; swans do not get pure white the first year. The trumpeter swan is by far the larger of the two varieties; this bird weighs between twenty-five and thirty-five pounds, and is well-proportioned, not waddle-y like these European swans that are in our parks. But unfortunately for this, the largest migratory bird in America, it nested in what is now the cultivated parts of our continent; the result is it is almost exterminated. But the whistling swan, which is about one-third smaller than the trumpeter, I am pleased to report is still here by the thousands.

Shortly after I got the geese educated to come here the swans started congregating along the shores of the lake, three miles south, where, as I have previously stated, the geese usually go to roost, and occasionally a flock will follow the geese here in the morning, but I have never been able to induce them to alight, possibly on account of the ponds being small and muddy. There seem to be more of these white beauties every year, and one evening last April when the geese went to the lake, the voices of the swans could be heard at my home, apparently welcoming the geese back to the calm bosom of Lake Erie. Before sunrise next morning I was out to the lake, and as I looked over the bank, about one mile west of Kingsville, here were over three hundred swans feeding in the shallow water, all within a stone’s throw of shore; a little farther out was a line of two hundred more; and the sandbar, which is from one-quarter to one-half mile out, was simply white with them for fully half a mile. While it was impossible to count them away out there, yet I am sure there were over a thousand. Remember, I have a powerful pair of glasses, and these birds were not gulls, they were swans; and really the bunch of five hundred which I counted in the water did not look one-half the size of the flock that was on the bar.

But the encouraging part of it all is that these birds nest still farther north than the wild geese, therefore there is no danger at that point.

The last few years I have become quite well acquainted with the bird proposition around Niagara Falls, and it is sad to think that so many of our choicest waterfowl are meeting death in this rolling foam. Now I haven’t lived there, and there is a whole lot I don’t understand about the situation, but it seems that early in the spring these swans come to the open water above the Falls before the rest of the lake is open. Night comes on and they put their heads on their backs and drift, like so many white pillows. By times a bunch ventures a little too far, its members are caught in the rapid water, cannot rise and over the falls they go. Fully seventy-five per cent. are either killed with the ice or are drowned; those that have life enough left crawl upon the icebridge that is formed just below the falls. Now with the iron bridge just below them, and the hundred feet of a foaming falls in front of them, they are apparently bewildered. Not having strength enough to rise straight up they sit there, and gradually grow weaker and weaker, and if the night is frosty, the spray from the Falls simply freezes them into a helpless condition.

Mr. Wm. Hill, of Niagara Falls, told me that one morning last spring there were over forty live swans on the icebridge. Mr. Hill is a man well acquainted with the whole situation, and he got five and expressed them to me, but they were so weak they could hardly stand. One was bruised with the ice and died. Later on two other gentlemen sent me two more. The photograph shows the six swans in my park a few months later. Notice what beauties they are, and they couldn’t look worse if they were paid for it, as they have just moulted. The photo shows them on land as well as in the water. Note what neat, trim beauties they are!

Now I am going to put them in my north pond and try to breed them there.