At exactly 8:30 this morning, I glanced out a window at the University of Missouri Hospital, just in time to see a flock of swans. Moving east to west over the football stadium, they were too distant and my observation was too brief to make a species identification. Needless to say, the sighting was an unexpected shock to my system and they moved out of view before I could even get an accurate count; my guess is that a dozen swans comprised the flock.
Whether they were tundra or trumpeter swans is impossible for me to say but this was, by far, the largest congregation of swans that I have ever seen in central Missouri. Tundra swans, which breed across the Arctic, generally winter on estuaries along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts though some head south along the Rocky Mountain corridor to wetlands in New Mexico and Texas. Trumpeter swans breed on lakes throughout parts of the Northern Rockies and have been reintroduced across the Upper Midwest over the past few decades; most of these birds stay put or migrate short distances in winter through some banded in the Midwest have been found to migrate as far west as southeast Colorado and as far south as Arkansas.
For the above reasons, I suspect that this morning's flock was comprised of trumpeter swans but I plan to check local rare bird alerts in the coming days to see if others had a better view; if time permits, I'll also pay a visit to Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area, on the Missouri River floodplain, which is a magnet for waterfall that pass through our region. Whether I obtain more information or not, the swans provided a brief but inspiring sight that I will remember and cherish for many years to come.
