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Trumpeter swans are pictured at a pond near the Willapa Hills Trailhead in Chehalis on Wednesday, Dec. 3.
Seeking dairy farm fields and wetlands, the swans, like clockwork, show up in late November and can be seen in the area through early March.
Margaret Smith, executive director of the Trumpeter Swan Society, headquartered in Minnesota, called them “magnificent birds” when reached by The Chronicle in 2022.
Trumpeter swans are the heaviest flying bird and the heaviest waterfowl native to North America.
“You can’t miss them because they’re huge and they’re white and they’re beautiful. They have a wingspan anywhere from 6 to 8 feet,” Smith said.
According to the Audubon Society, nesting pairs of the swans typically mate for life. Juvenile swans, called signets, can be told apart from their nearly all-white parents by their gray feathers, Smith said. In a field or pond with dozens or hundreds of swans, groups of three or four swans usually signify families. After breeding and raising the young over the spring and summer, the parents will stay with the signets for the first winter of their lives. That they all stay together also makes it easier to identify sick or injured swans, Smith said. If a swan is isolated for a long period of time, she said it’s likely to be ill.
Most of the swans in Washington are migrants who breed and spend the summers in Alaska and British Columbia, Smith said. They fly south to escape extreme cold weather.
