An innovative swan-tracking project initiated by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and a CalPoly Humboldt graduate student is shedding light on how the Pacific Coast Trumpeter Swans use the landscapes they …

Whether weekly, monthly or annual in frequency, all of our OPAS Swan Study surveys are just snapshots of the current numbers and usage locations of the swans in our area through …

While our 2023–24 monitoring of overwintering swans in the lower Dungeness Valley followed the patterns of a typical season, strong differences in the weather made that winter unique. Through thirteen years …

The winter of 2023–2024 started with a BANG! as our team counted a hundred swans pass overhead with a windstorm and still a week left in October. Half of them stopped over and swan …

The 2022–2023 winter was the 12th year of swan monitoring in the lower Dungeness Valley by OPAS-led volunteers. At the end of an unusual season that kept us on our toes, our last overwintering swans left the …

Trumpeter Swans overwinter in the Dungeness agricultural landscape every year. While local swan numbers are not as high as counties east of the Salish Sea, the OPAS swan team's data …

It's mid-autumn migration for birds – time to attune our ears and glimpse upwards then around the bend in the road, following the sounds and the line of trees into the field. The Trumpeter Swans, encouraged by …

The 2021–2022 winter was the 11th season for Trumpeter Swan (TRUS) monitoring in the lower Dungeness Valley by OPAS-led volunteers. A team of experienced and dedicated volunteers completed 23 weekly …

With such robust swan numbers in our Sequim-Dungeness area last winter, we watched the skies this fall and had to simply hold onto our hats. Predictions of colder and wetter-than-average weather due to …

Pandemic aside, it's been an unusual year for the swan team as repeated power-line collisions at Kirner Road confirmed it was necessary to take decisive action on a campaign to bury the power lines.

Hats off to all of our volunteers! With both experienced volunteers and new recruits – thirty strong – we survey foraging fields weekly, plus study overnight usage at roosting sites. Foraging surveys started the last week of …

The agricultural landscapes, man-made ponds and sloughs in Sequim/Dungeness area provide a more complex and variable overwintering habitat than other areas in western Washington used by Trumpeter Swans. While eastern …

During the winter of 2010/2011, five Trumpeter Swans were found dead in the Sequim area. Necropsies of the birds attributed their death to lead poisoning, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the swans ingested the lead in our area. It takes …