Chesapeake Bay Gets Trumpeter Swans
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BALTIMORE — Majestic trumpeter swans returned Friday to Chesapeake Bay, ending an absence of nearly 200 years.
Three female swans followed an ultralight plane, whose pilot they think is their parent, from Warrenton, Va.
The black-beaked white birds, named for their melodious call, have 8-foot wingspans and once lived throughout North America. Hunted nearly to extinction by the 1930s--for food, feathers and powder puffs--they now number about 19,000, mostly in the West, because of legal protections. The hope of the Migratory Bird Project is to bring the species back East, where 200,000 used to winter along the Chesapeake Bay.
The young trumpeter swans will spend the winter at a 255-acre farm on the state’s Eastern Shore. Two males, considered too unreliable to follow the ultralight, will be trucked to the farm.
Trumpeter swans learn from their parents to migrate. But if the older birds in a flock are killed by hunters, the young don’t know where to migrate and the knowledge is forever lost.
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