Trumpeters, tides and tubers
Since late March, eBird’s been showing bands of 2 to 5 northbound trumpeters dispersed throughout Taashuyee-Chookan.aani, tideflat-grassy-land (Mendenhall Wetlands). Today in light drizzle, Cathy and I drove out from town with the Nikon P1000 in search of some to film. Didn’t even get to Pasture Creek (Vanderbilt) before spotting a pair on the inside of Egan, Their traditional milfoiling & tuber-grubbing waters at Twin Lakes & Pioneer Marsh are still frozen, so every patch of open, mostly-fresh water longer than 100 yards (a trumpeter’s ‘runway’ requirement) offers a precious refueling for migrants on tight schedules.
I’ve always wondered about the annual cycle of pondweed (Potamogeton spp). Swans are super-early migrants, reputedly strongly dependent on this submerged aquatic during their March and April journeys. But what parts of the plant? Leaves? Seeds? Runners down in the mud? Writing up today’s journal sent me after research into this cosmopolitan genus and it’s relation to waterfowl. Found a 2004 thesis by Helen Hangelbroek from Lake Lauwersmeer in the northern Netherlands that answered some questions and raised others.
My 2025-26 wetlands journal has 2 pages, with contour map for puzzling out the balance of fresh and salt waters creating this swan haven at a time when most wetlands are deep under snow. Download 2MB pdf here. 
