FERNDALE — Indy, the trumpeter swan, was starving to death, stranded in a marsh on Indian Creek west of Port Angeles.
Then, on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 7, a flotilla of wildlife biologists, Clallam County Streamkeepers and other waterborne volunteers rescued and transported her to a rehabilitation center in Snohomish County.
Indy, so named for the creek where two other swans left her alone last winter, was dangerously underweight, said Martha Jordan, a biologist and trumpeter swan expert who came from Everett to help with the rescue.
Not enough launch space
The bird was trapped in the marsh, unable to take flight.
Trumpeters, the largest of all North American waterfowl, need 40 feet of open water surface to launch, Jordan said.
To make matters worse, there wasn’t nearly enough food left to sustain the swan, which needs as much as 10 pounds of food daily.
Once Indy had been taken to the rehab home run by the Trumpeter Swan Society (www.TrumpeterSwanSociety.org), Jordan expected her to take months to recover.
It would be late summer before the bird was ready to go out on her own, the biologist said in mid-February.
But Indy proved her caregivers wrong.
By “chowing down,” Jordan said, she put on the pounds and by mid-March was giving every indication she was in shape to fly.
“[She] gained 6 pounds in five weeks. That’s humongous. She’s around 21 pounds now,” Jordan said Wednesday. “The bird is completely healthy.”
And so on Thursday afternoon, Indy regained her freedom.
Ready to fly
Jordan took her to the wide, open spaces of the 1,500-acre Lake Terrell Recreation Area near Ferndale in Whatcom County — an ideal refuge, she said, because other trumpeter swans stop over there on their spring migration into western Canada and on up to Alaska.
Indy “has got an urge to migrate. Hopefully, she’ll make it to Alaska, but there are many places in British Columbia where she can spend the summer and do just fine,” Jordan added.
“Other birds will pick her up,” coming north.
Bringing Indy back to Clallam County would not have been best for the bird, Jordan said, since the trumpeter swan population isn’t as large here at this time of year.
And in contrast with Lake Terrell, this part of the Olympic Peninsula doesn’t have the kind of swan habitat Indy needs to stretch her wings and gain flight stamina.
She needs a place that’s “remote and big enough,” Jordan said, “where she can feed and find her own swans.”
Indy is “one spunky bird . . . that’s been wanting to be free,” Jordan said after turning her loose.
As soon as she let go of the swan, Indy swam to the far side of the lake, and after a few minutes lifted off and flew several hundred yards.
“She was flying strongly,” Jordan said. “It was great.”
M-25 is ‘our girl’
Indy is newly fitted with a yellow identification collar marked M-25, “so if you see that, that’s our girl,” Jordan added.
C.J. Rankin, one of the Streamkeepers volunteers who helped rescue the trumpeter on Feb. 7, couldn’t make it to Lake Terrell for the release, but was thrilled to hear of it.
A former volunteer at the Northwest Raptor Center, Rankin knows how fiercely eagles stick with their mates.
Similarly, trumpeter swans are known to bond with one mate for most of their long lives.
Like Jordan, Rankin was impressed by Indy’s rapid recovery and said her freedom now means she has a good chance of joining a flock on its way to summering grounds.
“She can go out at this time of year and find a partner,” Rankin said.
“She may not lay eggs this year,” but she’ll be much better off out there, with the single male trumpeters.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
