Trumpeter Swans massing for migration down south

This summer I travelled to several remote villages in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta area of Alaska or the YK Delta as it is know locally.  Many of these trips start we me leaving Anchorage on Alaska Airlines’ 737 and flying to one of the hub cities like Bethel, Dillingham, or Kotzebue from which I change planes to a smaller single engine or twin engine airplane.

I spend time in Cessna 206, 207, and 208 aircraft along with the Piper Navajo which are the workhorses (taxi’s) to travel into the bush communities.  Many times over the course of the summer I fly over literally a million small lakes scattered across the tundra as I visit my project sites. 

I find it interesting to see the different wildlife that calls these lands home.  There may be caribou herds transiting the area as they free range never stopping or hardly slowing down as they drop there babies who quickly keep up with the groups.  I have seen a few mush oxen that usually stay within a 10 to 15 mile area and look like something from Jurassic Park.  There is the wolf packs that wander looking for food and the ever present bear wandering around looking for fish or berries.

Over the summer I have seen many Canadian geese and trumpeter swans.  Both species mate for life and in the middle of summer it seems like every three of five lakes has a pair swimming there or nestled alongside the bank.  It seems that they tend to require about 10 acre of area for each pair as many instances there are only the two birds in a single lake. 

After the cycle of eggs hatch the brood of young swans (cygnets) can be seen from the air swimming in the lake and learning to fly.  There is a molting period (can’t fly) for both the adult male and female birds which occurs just after each other which I guess is natures way that one of the parents can still fly and protect the others.

The males weigh about 26 to 28 pounds and are approximately 60” with a wingspan of almost 7 feet.  It is a beautiful waterfowl and are graceful in the water or flying usually connecting with several other pairs and then flying in a V-formation. 

As the summer winds down here in Alaska this latest trip I saw a change in the lakes as I flew out to and returned from the villages.  I could see that the spread of lakes which had a pair of swans all summer had now changed and there were flocks of trumpeter swans gathered together awaiting their flight down to the Pacific northwest or southern Canada.  Many from this area travel back and forth each year to Montana as the tagged birds are followed electronically and their paths recorded by Fish & Game.  It seemed on this trip that the birds had gathered in groups in about one out of twenty lakes.  It is a neat thing to see as these various groups take flight and fly a short distance to the next group and the process starts over again with each successive group getting larger and larger.

The geese do the same thing but they tend to travel to the nearest grassy type area and amass into huge numbers before the thousands take flight and fly south.

Witnessing this phenomenon each year allows one to learn and look for the changes as the season progresses while seeing nature’s natural rhythm at work.  We see it in the fishing cycle of the different species of salmon each year returning to the river they spawned from seven years earlier.  It is awe inspiring and humbling at the same time.

I just thought I would share this with everyone and wish the pictures I tried to take were better.  Small white dots against water or tundra do not make for an interesting photo without a longer lens.

We are in the changing of the seasons here with our leaves turning yellow which does not last long as the wind blows and the trees are bare before the snow falls shortly.  Daylight is getting shorter now with a loss of over 5 ½ minutes of daylight each day as we head into winter.

Ice