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The Swan Patrol
David Johnson
Some of you will recall at one of the
club meetings in the spring of 2002 a gentleman by the name of Harry
Lumsden came to the club looking for volunteers to take him flying to
look for Trumpeter Swans (Cygnus buccinator). Well some people
fly to the Bahamas or tour the Grand Canyon by air. Me? I
volunteered and now I putt around Ontario in a C-150 with Harry
looking for swans.
Trumpeter Swans appear to have ranged
through many parts of North America including Manitoba, Ontario and
Quebec. In a paper published in 1984 Harry wrote about how the
Trumpeter Swans "have not bred in the east for more than a
century."
They appear to have largely disappeared during the time of the fur
trade as by the time the land was settled they had all but
disappeared so there are almost no direct records of their inhabiting
this part of the world. Harry's work establishing their distribution
has no records of observers to rely on so he "infer[s] its
original distribution only from indirect evidence" such as
archeological digs that unearth Trumpeter Swans' bones. The most
likely cause of their disappearance is the introduction of firearms
to North America, and ironically, today it's firearms in the hands of
irresponsible hunters that is one of the major impediments to the
success of Harry's program to restore the Trumpeter Swans to their
former range in Ontario.
Harry has been at this for over 20
years and the process is has experimented with many techniques.
Principally he and quite a number of other volunteers including Peter
Calverly (of TAL) who care for breeding pairs and these and their
progeny are released into the wild. And this is where the flying part
comes in: the surveys in the spring are to look for nesting pairs, in
the summer to see if there are broods and in the fall to search for
future release sites.
Our first flight was May 20, 2002. I've
never gone looking for swans before but I was still current on the
C-150 from my commercial and it seemed to be a natural choice as it's
slow, not too noisy (from the point of view of people on the ground -
Harry always wants to go lower) and, of course, it's a high wing.
Walk around complete we bundled in and fired it up. Harry laughed at
me for my little laminated C-150 check lists card; turns out he's an
old Mosquito pilot and could still recite his check list mantra. Oh
well, at least he's used to flying. That first trip was basically a
large semi-circle around Buttonville with a 25 -30 mile radius
starting with the ponds by the Pickering Nuclear power station (great
place for swans although Oshawa tower was not pleased), then Lake
Scuggog, various marshes and wetlands around to bottom of Cooks Bay
and continuing south west all the way to Palgrave. Turns out that we
pilots get the perfect training for this, in fact it's a flight test
item: the diversion. Harry has his topographical maps with their
great detail and I have my VNC. We figure out where we need to go
next on my map from where we are, climb out and fly from map to
ground to that location, confirm, descend, circle and then on to the
next wet land. We don't cover a lot of linear distance but we do
cover a lot of area. I don't know how many swans/nests we scored as I
wasn't yet keeping count but I do know that Trumpeter Swans are big
birds easily seen from 500' up or even 1000' when we are over settled
areas, nuclear power plants, etc.
In September we covered the western
part of the area we'd covered in May as we checked around Palgrave
then followed the Holland river to Cooke's bay. From there we
meandered north west eventually following the Nottawasaga river to
Wasaga beach. Then north east toward Midland as there always seem to
be an inordinate number of small lakes and swanish areas in the
vicinity of airports. Wye marsh constituted the northern end of the
trip as a relatively large number of swans have taken up permanent
residence there. Having exhausted that area and our gluteus muscles
we flew straight home.
October 8, 2002 and Harry must have
been feeling a little more confident in me. This trip we started
looking in the Palgrave area but then zig-zagged north west to
Shelburne, Flesherton and Holland Center. Then past Owen Sound to
Shallow Lake and on up to the lakes around Wiarton airport
reinforcing my notion there are more swan lakes clustered near
airports than any other manmade feature. We still had a good deal of
ground(water) to cover so a break was in order so we stopped off at
Wiarton. The left tank read 1/2 full and the right still read full so
it seemed prudent to refuel just in case the gauges were correct.
This ultimately led to a temporary suspension of my rental privileges
with TAL but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Departing
Wiarton we checked more small lakes to the south east and then
continued south east. There is a river west of Collingwood that flows
north into Nottawasga bay and the contour lines on the map delineate
the river valley. But the map didn't do justice the view as we flew
east over the lip to be treated to a scene of fall colours and the
landscape stretching all the way to Collingwood. From there it was
south to lakes and wetlands on the way to the Mans VOR and we called
it a day and headed home. Hobbs time 3.3, Harry is definitely getting
braver.
May 14 2003 we set off on the Spring
patrol starting at Lake Scuggog, back towards Cooke's bay up the west
side of Simcoe and back to the Midland area. From there east to Lake
Couchiching and the north side of Lake Simcoe. One giant diversion
until we finally pointed the nose south and headed home. This time I
recorded the score -71 swans and 8 nests in 3.5 hours; Harry's
confidence seemed to be increasing.
The latest one was to be to the east,
further than we had gone before. Weather and various other scheduling
factors conspired to keep us on the ground until early June. Then we
set off checking Lake Scuggog area again and then east to Rice Lake.
However I had been watching the left fuel gauge go down while the
right tank continued read full. Mindful of previous experiences with
this sort of situation and that there is a dearth of airports between
there and our eastern destination of Kingston I elected to abort and
return to Buttonville. The score was only 2.
We finally got the eastern trip
launched successfully and it was on this trip we we received
acknowledgment of being the Swan Patrol. We repeated the part up to
Rice Lake and from there we followed the Trent river around to Percy
Reach. There are a number of good swan locations in the south part of
the Trenton control zone so we had planned to circumnavigate the zone
and enter from the south east. When we contacted the Tower they were
remarkably helpful offering us passage following the river and
overhead the field. Just after we overflew the field and picked up a
heading to the south west someone with the call sign of "Thunder
1" called in and got approval to make a low and over of runway
13 circling for 24. Tower admonished me not to deviate from my
current heading as someone very big and very fast was going to go by
on my left.... Yes sir! Whoever he was he landed on 13 so we didn't
see him go by. A few minutes later as we arrived at Lake Consecon
another military aircraft reported in from the south. Tower told him
to watch for a civilian aircraft around Lake Consecon looking for
swans by and the pilot acknowledged The Swan Patrol. So there it's
official.
Lot's of places to look in Prince
Edward County and a few on Amherst Island then a welcome break
landing at Kingston. Score 51 swans and 3 broods.
Departing Kingston we checked the east
end of the Bay of Quinte and then back through Trenton via the
Consecon route. Once again Trenton was remarkably accommodating to
Harry's requests to wander about their zone checking various
promising locations. A long lazy flight back along the coast made
navigating pretty simple and we checked out the area around the
nuclear plant again before heading for the final home stretch. Score
40 swans and but 1 brood. 5.1 hours in a C-150, I didn't sit down for
2 days.
It's late in September as I write this,
I expect a call from Harry any day now for the next trip.