Swans in carrot field at Ward Road. Photo: Dee Renee Ericks

Stories of Safe Roosting and Partnerships in Place

by Laura Davis and Liam Antrim

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. We update readers here on the context of these too-often lethal encounters of swans with power lines at the important Kirner Road overnight roosting site. Further, we bring news of positive partnerships between WDFW and our local farmers, and then, tell how we spread our wings wide for a mid-winter survey from Port Townsend to Neah Bay.

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The winter season started placidly enough. With a steadfast team of experienced swan surveyors and a global pandemic underway, our main concern was for our team members' health and safety. The migratory swans returned early to the Pacific Northwest. Our weekly counts were extraordinarily high in November, and we reached about 200 swans before year end. Mostly it is Trumpeter Swans, but we have also watched a few juvenile Tundra Swans in the mix throughout the season. The Tundras’ Western Population and the Trumpeters’ Pacific Coast Population intermingle as they use the same stopover habitats on their migration along the Pacific Flyway.

This is the third season our local OPAS citizen-science project has conducted regular surveys of night-roosting sites, which help describe more fully the swans’ usage of the north Olympic Peninsula. In the dim light, cold and wind, our hardy and dedicated volunteers record swan usage at the wetland roosting sites – tracking swan numbers, arrivals and departures. The swans give much in return to our volunteers, letting our personal cares roll down their backs in the beauty of the first light of day.

Daily dawn-survey data collected by OPAS swan-study volunteer and Conservation Committee Co-chair, Bob Phreaner, document the ponds and wetlands at Woodcock and Kirner roads as a location consistently favored by the roosting swans for most of the season, with a high tally of 112 swans seen at Kirner Pond and adjacent Gaskell Slough.

Looking at a single place day after day, we learn to see. Observe, and with countless records the patterns of behavior emerge.

The deeper pond and a good vegetative buffer around Kirner Pond seem to protect waterfowl from predators. Also, there's no disturbance at Kirner Pond from the hunting activities experienced at our marsh sites from November through January. Freshwater wetlands are scarce in our location, especially ones with sufficient open water and native vegetation to provide overnight shelter and forage. And location, location: Kirner Pond is not far from agricultural fields and pasture lands for daytime forage. They leave the roosting sites each dawn, feed in the fields, then return again at nightfall.

*Swans take off from Kirner Pond at dawn for day forage areas. Photo: Bob Phreaner*

Trumpeter Swans are one of the heaviest flying birds in the world. To get their 25 pounds aloft requires about 100 yards of “runway” length, and they will typically take off into the wind for the lift needed to fly. Kirner Pond seems to be just large enough for their morning takeoffs. Sufficient wind from the west – the typical direction of the prevailing winds – can help the swans climb quickly and gain enough height to get over the power lines on Kirner Road. These lines are about 35’ higher than the pond’s surface and run along 350' of the pond's west edge. The swans signal to each other with powerful stretches and wing flaps, honks and head bobs. It's time; let's go. With powerful acceleration, it's a run across the water's surface while flapping huge wings. Seeing them take off in a group, Bob likens to a stampede. Whether flying from a field or a pond surface, it is a mighty sight and sound to witness the swans' takeoff.

Collisions can and do occur. While we have otherwise documented swan injury and fatality following winter gales and night flights, Bob’s Kirner Pond data show strikes with power lines occurring during calm conditions, and compounded by poor visibility due to fog, drizzle, and flocks of swans flying at once. Bob sees the swans swim about to detect the wind conditions. Flying up powerfully as a group from the pond's surface, not seeing the wires immediately ahead, and getting caught behind other swans ... there is neither space nor time to make adjustments for safe clearance. While sideways-facing eyes provide excellent peripheral vision to protect the swans from predators, this feature compromises the swans' ability to see the fine power lines. Striking overhead power lines is the largest cause of swan death and injury in our area.

It's twelve minutes before sunrise. A juvenile swan trails behind and below others as a group of 27 takes flight at once. No room to ascend, it flies into a wire, then spins out of control to the road. Stunned, it recovers minutes later, alights and continues off to the west.

Bob uses video to assist his counts at Kirner Pond; on five occasions not halfway through the current season, Bob observed and videotaped swans hitting the power lines with enough force to fall to the road. When their broad wings and massive bodies strike the fixed power lines and then, further, they fall and hit the ground, swans suffer physical injury. The swan's bones are light in weight and weak, making them likely to break their own wing if they strike something like a wire. Sometimes swans that hit wires and fall to the ground find their way down through the vegetation to the pond, paddle over to the far side, and then repeat their attempts to take off.

Whenever swans strike the wires or a lone swan is seen during the day, we assist WDFW by monitoring for injuries – as we did following a fall to the ground on December 3. This swan struggled down through the brush and back to the pond, where it remained for three weeks.

*Swan-team volunteers and neighbors helped WDFW monitor this Trumpeter, injured on December 3, for changes in apparent condition. Photo: Bob Phreaner*

Such a tranquil scene: a swan floating on a pond. The swan floats in the pond seemingly without effort or care, but its presence alone at a roosting site during the day is a sign. It may have injuries that later prove fatal. If we are able to catch an injured swan for rehabilitation, it means the swan has lost the strength to avoid capture by humans approaching in kayaks. A juvenile was recently euthanized after sustaining multiple breaks to its wing. The tissue became infected and the swan grew seriously emaciated over time.

On December 9 one Trumpeter Swan was electrocuted–striking two wires at once. On recommendation from WDFW, Clallam PUD hangs flap-like diverters on the wires to enhance their visibility to birds. Although PUD hung 50 additional diverters, the day following this casualty, these could not address the problem of the swans being able to clear the wires; another swan injury shortly followed. The line marking is a partial mitigation. Where the swans cannot control their flight position, the wires and diverters simply pose a barrier – like a fence, or a wall. Few swans slip between the power lines unscathed.

*WDFW Biologist Shelly Ament removes the deceased Trumpeter Swan from Kirner Road following the December 9 electrocution. Photo: Bob Phreaner*

A deflection of the wire gives us a clue that a swan touched a wire. Aah, a “near miss”. In our minds, the touch of two wires at once causing electrocution is horribly devastating and creates an indelible memory. A swan might strike a wire hard and fall thirty feet to the ground, yet somehow survive. Now the swan fears its exposed position on the road and is on its feet with quick action, scuttling down through the brush back to the safety of the pond. Too often, these strikes and these falls show up as broken ribs, wings and legs.

*PUD hanging additional diverters on the power lines to help make the lines more visible to the swans. Photo: Bob Phreaner*

WDFW and OPAS have recommended burying the Kirner Road power lines. Working in coordination with the Clallam PUD, we expect to complete construction before the swans return next fall. A special heartfelt thanks to the folks near Kirner Pond who have assisted with monitoring injured swans and those who are now helping OPAS realize the vision of the swans' safe return to Kirner Pond for generations to come. About 19% of the swans visiting our area this year are first-year birds; we expect these swans, their parents, elder siblings, and the next crop of juveniles will arrive at Kirner Pond next year to a quality roosting site free of the hazardous overhead power lines.

Trumpeter Swans have strong pair and family bonds. Photo: John Gussman

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Here in the rain shadow of the Olympics, our area lacks an abundance of the freshwater wetlands that swans prefer and so they turn to our agricultural fields to supplement their diet. Our local swans find nutrition in corn stubble (near Port Williams and Schmuck roads, Sequim-Dungeness near Sunland, and Lamar Lane) especially as the cover crops fill in. With small stomachs they must graze all the time, and pasture grasses help provide sustenance. At the turn of the year, they started gleaning the carrot fields (Ward Road, north of Woodcock). Balancing cool-season farm harvests with supporting wildlife usage can be a challenge.

*Swans in carrot field at Ward Road. Photo: Dee Renee Ericks*

The swans are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. With a population recovered through active conservation efforts, our native swans are protected in Washington State from hunting and other disturbances.

Many of you may be familiar with the losses to Nash’s crops from foraging swans two years ago. The big snow event of January 2019 led to over-wintering crops being destroyed as swans, geese and ducks found the only green plants above the snow surface. For two days they fed there, undisturbed, on the green leaves they’d normally pass over. Nash had developed these unique brassicas and seed crops over several years of selective breeding. The financial loss was large and the investment in the breeding not recoverable. Farmers generally didn’t blame the birds, instead extended a request to the community who stepped forward with assistance.

Harvesting carrots into January avoids the need for cold storage but does risk overlap with the swan presence in the lower Dungeness Valley. Nash Huber breeds his carrots for the sweet flavor that develops in the cold temperatures. In past years, Nash has declined to disturb the swans on his fields, sometimes harvesting and putting the carrots into cold storage before the swans arrived. This year, he approached WDFW for assistance before a problem developed on his unharvested carrot fields. At the end of November, five swan-team members volunteered for WDFW and placed poles with mylar flags around the carrot field at Ward Road to help deter swans from landing. Like the deterrents on the power lines, this field flagging technique is seen as a partial solution – in this case most effective in combination with hazing. Where swans are considered pests, property owners are advised to use disturbance techniques such as hazing that get birds up and moving out of the area; these would encourage the swans to avoid the field in the future.

Volunteers Pam Maurides, Enid Phreaner and Bob Phreaner tape mylar flagging onto fiberglass poles. These were placed in the carrot field at the end of November and removed a month later. Photo by Laura Davis

A month after pole installation and just as the rains hit, the swans did start making their way in the carrot fields. With soils too mucky for further harvest, Nash decided to open the field to the swans’ gleaning of the remaining carrots.

Watching their heads root around in the muddiest soils of the field, no carrots came up but serrations on their bill edges whittled away at these underground tubers. So tasty and nutritious, plus a win-win for the tilth of the farm soils. We skirted our way around the edge of the field to remove the flagging no longer needed. The swans tolerated our presence for only so long – then up and over they flew to the fallow corn field nearby.

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By request of the NW Swan Conservation Association and WDFW, our swan team partnered again in the realm of data collection for a Mid-winter Swan Survey. Our normal team of four surveyors per week expanded to fifteen, as our guest surveyors participated from eastern Jefferson County to western Clallam County for this January 20 foraging survey. Counts at Cat Lake (Miller Peninsula), Center Road (Chimacum, Jefferson County) and Wa’atch River (Makah Reservation) were added to our local Sequim-Dungeness count of 200 Trumpeter Swans (TRUS) for a north Olympic Peninsula total of 298 TRUS on this date. An interesting result was a finding of 35% juveniles in the Chimacum area, compared to 16–19% in our Sequim-Dungeness area. We speculate there may be some movement between these areas, facilitated by a roosting site on the Miller Peninsula.

Migrations and the associated human partnerships have their seasonal cycles. It is nearing the season’s end, and zugenruhe sets in (migration anxiety). Late March is a good time to watch for swans in the air. Groups may stage themselves on Dungeness Bay, restless. If the conditions are not quite right for a trip across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, they just might remain to forage. Let’s try another day. Keep your eyes and ears open, and you may catch the swans at the start of their journey back north.