Graceful visitors arrive at the Goulbourn Wetlands

(A beautiful graceful pair of Trumpeter Swans who seem to have befriended a pair of Canada Geese were discovered in the Goulbourn Wetland Complex during the past two weeks. Photo: Scott Campbell)

This past week, Scott Campbell of Stittsville, discovered that “a pair of trumpeter swans has taken up residence in the Stittsville Wetlands”. He saw them on May 6 and in the previous week – “so I’m hoping that they are nesting there”, he told Stittsville Central. It is extremely rare to discover a pair of Trumpeter Swans in our wetlands here in Stittsville.

Preferring shallow-water wetlands with abundant underwater vegetation and areas with minimal human activity, we want to provide privacy for the Trumpeter Swans. To allay a turnout of photographers and onlookers, for this reason we are not disclosing their exact location, only to say that they can be found in the Goulbourn Wetlands Complex.

When Trumpeter Swan construct their nest, it is large and ranges from 1.2 to 3.6 meters in diameter serving as a protected platform for incubation and raising their young cygnets. It is usually built as a clump made up of cattails, sedges, and other aquatic plants on an existing structure such as muskrat or beaver dam, as floating vegetation mats, small islands, or manmade platforms. Swan pairs often use the same nest site year after year. It is important that should you discover a Trumpeter Swan nest, that it not be destroyed.

The female (pen) will lay up to seven eggs between late April and early May. Both sexes incubate the eggs that will hatch after 35-41 days. The young birds, or cygnets, sometimes ride on their parents’ backs and remain with the adult birds for four or five months.

Trumpeter Swans are our biggest native waterfowl, stretching to 6 feet in length and weighing more than 25 pounds – almost twice as massive as a Tundra Swan. Getting airborne requires a lumbering takeoff along a 100-yard runway.

No longer listed as endangered, Trumpeter Swans are now protected under the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act that is administered by Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Wye Marsh Wildlife Centre in Midland, Ontario maintains an area of open water during the winter months for the swans to eat, drink and bathe; and where the majority of Ontario Trumpeter Swans spend their winters. Surprisingly, they have sufficient insulation and are able to survive a Canadian winter. When Spring arrives, they begin looking for a new home or return to a previous nesting location.

Trumpeter Swans are known for mating for life and return to a former nesting territory if the returning member of a pair was previously successful at raising young in that area. We can only hope that this pair chooses to remain and nest only to return for many years so the Goulbourn Wetlands will become their new summer home.