 |
A box of Sibley Backyard Birding Flashcards, photograph by the Author. The cards can be found for sale HERE.
Have
you ever seen a bird and not known what it was?
You know if you could just see a picture of it, you would recognize it
and then you would know what it was called.
It
happened to me the other day, my wife and I were out on a 15-mile hike along
the Lake Erie shoreline, near Buffalo, New York, (we were helping my youngest
son complete his Boy Scouts of America, Hiking merit badge) when I saw a swan
in the waters of the inner harbor. I
knew it was a swan, but I also knew that there were several kinds of wild swans
that migrate across Lake Erie during the spring, and I didn’t know whether it
was a mute swan, a trumpeter swan or, maybe, a tundra swan1.
 |
Photograph by the Author.
Luckily,
a short while afterwards, my daughter gave me a box of 100 Sibley Backyard
Birding Flash Cards for my birthday, and when I opened it, right there on top
was a picture of the swan I had seen!
Bingo! It was a Mute Swan, cygnus olor, a species of swan that was
originally from Europe, but was introduced into North America and is now native
throughout much of the northeastern United States2.
 |
Photograph by the Author.
Mystery
solved, thanks to the Sibley Backyard Birding Flash Cards! If you don’t have a set already, get one and
study then and then amaze everyone when you are out in the wilderness on how
well you know your birds. That is what I
am planning to do!
To
watch a video of the Mute Swan that I saw that day along the Buffalo, NY waterfront,
go to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube, HERE.
Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Could You Survive:
Building a Fire When it is Wet ©”, where we will discuss Air Force survival expert’s
thoughts about what to do to get that fire going when everything is wet.
I
hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me
on YouTube at Bandanaman Productions for other related videos, HERE. Don’t forget to follow me on both The
Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE,
and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube. If you have questions, as always, feel free
to leave a comment on either site. I
announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions,
and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.
That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
1 There
are three species of swans currently in North America. Two are native to North America; the Trumpeter
Swan, cygnus buccinator, and the Tundra Swan, cygnus columbianus,
which is also known as the Whistling Swan. The Mute Swan, cygnus olor, is a
Eurasian swan that was introduced into North America and now breeds in the wild
in parts of the northeastern North America. All three are large all-white birds, and the
mute swan can easily be told apart from the trumpeter or tundra swan, because
the mute swan is the only one of the three to have an orange beak.
The Trumpeter Swan Society, “Which
Swan Species Did You See?”
2 Mute
Swans, cygnus olor, are non-migratory and mated pairs of mute
swans will usually stay in the same area year-round, unless their habitat ices
over or there are food shortages. These
swans were originally found in Europe and were brought to private estates and
zoos in the United States during the early 1900’s, because of their striking
appearance. Some of these mute swans
escaped from captivity in New Jersey in 1916 and in New York in 1919 and began
to successfully breed and survive in the wild.
Today mute swans can be found from southern Ontario, Canada to North
Carolina and there are an estimated 3,000 wild mute swans in New York
state.
New York Invasive Species Information, “Mute
Swan”
Sources
New York Invasive Species Information, “Mute
Swan”, July 2, 2019, [© New York Invasive Species
Information 2021], http://nyis.info/invasive_species/mute-swan/#:~:text=Mute%20swans%20(Cygnus%20olor)%20are,in%20New%20York%20(1919), accessed May 27, 2021
Sibley
Backyard Birding Flashcards, [Crown Publishing, © 2021 Sibley Guides]
The Trumpeter Swan Society, “Which
Swan Species Did You See?”, [© The
Trumpeter Swan Society 2021], https://www.trumpeterswansociety.org/swan-information/identification/overview.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjw16KFBhCgARIsALB0g8JwB51lG3F1Hq9osuH7RPw3CPkoCSW2q648YPY2xXj3EWWrqUibmq4aAm7XEALw_wcB, accessed May 22, 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment