A skinny — yet snowy and elegant — trumpeter swan from west of Port Angeles is continuing to recover after an epic rescue on Super Bowl Sunday more than a week ago.
The swan, believed to be a female, became malnourished after she was left behind last fall, said wildlife biologist Martha Jordan of Everett, who has spent three decades studying and ministering to swans across the Pacific Northwest.
The bird’s companions, two other trumpeters, flew away from the beaver pond on Indian Creek, where they were last seen around Thanksgiving, state Fish and Wildlife Department biologist Anita McMillan said.
McMillan watched the solitary bird for months, and then phoned Jordan to organize a rescue effort on Jan. 31.
The swan had stayed, not because she wanted to, Jordan believes, but because as winter wore on, she ran out of aquatic vegetation to eat, and then grew weaker from lack of exercise.
Trumpeters need 10 pounds of food a day, she said.
So by January’s end, she was still paddling there, in the patch of wetland half a mile from Granny’s Cafe on U.S. Highway 101.
Since trumpeters need about 40 feet of launch space — Jordan said they run across water or land before taking flight — the bird was stuck.
“She probably would have died in two weeks,” the biologist added.
So on Jan. 31, Jordan assembled a four-person rescue team that included state Fish and Wildlife biologist Shelly Ament of Sequim, who volunteered her time that Sunday, hoping to capture the bird and take her to the trumpeter swan rehabilitation center in Snohomish County.
Too wily for capture
But this fowl “was too lively and wily for four people,” Jordan said.
On Feb. 7, the four added six more, plus a flotilla of watercraft.
“We deployed in an assortment of vessels,” said rescue team member Steve Rankin of Sequim, a volunteer with Streamkeepers of Clallam County.
He and Hal Everett, also of Sequim, went in wearing chest waders.
Arnold and Debbie Schouten of Port Angeles arrived with a wetsuit and surfboard.
Ament was in her kayak, while Jordan and her friend, Paul Fischback, were in a canoe.
Stan Rill of Sequim paddled a second canoe, while Ken and Mary Campbell of Sequim brought a small pontoon boat.
Rankin’s wife C.J. stayed on shore; taking pictures and explaining matters to passers-by.
Volleyball net strategy
Jordan, for her part, was impressed that the suddenly-assembled team also brought an old volleyball net — which would ultimately spell success.
In the first several tries at capture, the bird labored at liftoff, but couldn’t get far.
“By the sixth pass, [she] was not able to get off the water at all, but could run across the water very well and was very smart, outmaneuvering us at every turn,” Jordan recalled.
Finally, after 90 minutes, the team rigged the volleyball net between two trees, used bamboo poles as barriers and blocked the perimeter with the pontoon boat, float tubes, one canoe and Ament’s kayak.
The swan swam in under the net, then “panicked,” Jordan said; the bird stuck her head through one of the four-inch-square holes.
The rescuers rushed in. Everett caught the bird, Jordan slipped her into a burlap bag and paddled her back to shore in her canoe and, after hauling the swan up the steep slope to the road, Jordan and Ament lowered her into a dog kennel.
“This is one of the most challenging captures I have made, ever,” Jordan said. “Without those who volunteered their equipment and time, it would not have been possible to do it.”
This trumpeter, which Jordan said is a yearling, will stay in the hospital for at least eight weeks. She’s at least 5 pounds underweight — a lot for a swan — and is now “eating, drinking and loving the heat lamps.”
The bird must put on some bulk, and weigh at least 21 pounds before she’s strong enough for to go into the wild, Jordan added.
A trumpeter swan “is like a B-52 bomber. The wing loading is huge,” with a tip-to-tip span of 8 feet.
This one “has been down for so long, she’s very weak,” Jordan said, adding she doubts the swan will be released until next fall, when flocks of others are around. This is a species that needs company to thrive.
Financial help needed now
Meantime, the bird needs financial help: donations for food, veterinary care and fencing materials. The Trumpeter Swan Society-run center where she’s convalescing — Jordan declined to give the location since its director has suffered harassment — survives on contributions, just like the Northwest Raptor Center in Sequim.
One of last Sunday’s rescue crew donated $100, Jordan noted. Now she hopes for more support from the swan’s home town, as it were.
With all of the worthy causes in this world, why would one give money to a single swan?
Jordan doesn’t hesitate in her answer. The wild Pacific coast, from Alaska to British Columbia to Washington, is a place like no other for trumpeter swans, she said.
With a population of 26,000, “this is our hotbed,” with the largest concentration of the birds anywhere in the world.
Yet as she has followed trumpeters, sometimes as a volunteer rescue team member, sometimes as a consultant paid by the state to study the species’ role in the ecosystem, Jordan has watched many die.
Lead poisoning and power lines are the primary killers, and Jordan has worked with teams of biologists who have euthanized many victims.
The one from Port Angeles is another story.
“I’m not the touchy-feely kind of girl,” she said. “I’m a realist. And this is one of those rare [rescued] swans that has an honest-to-God chance of surviving.”
We all have a choice, Jordan acknowledged, of giving to international charities, local groups or perhaps some to each. “I never put a judgment on what’s more important than another,” she added, “but if you don’t give locally, where does that leave your community, and the wildlife you enjoy going out and seeing?”
The rescue squad that came together a week ago reminded her of something powerful.
“They had a hands-on experience with a living, wild creature,” she said. “That reconnects us with who we are, and with our compassion to our fellow creatures.”
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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.
