Hey tweets, Marc Hoffman's sighting of 18 swans at the Fill yesterday
was one short by the time I got there, around noon. We counted 19!!
The four juveniles were still present, and I think there was a Tundra
Swan in the flock. One swan was noticeably smaller than the others and
had a different facial pattern: the black skin of the bill and
forehead seemed overall wider near the cheek and eye, less elongated
and angular than the Trumpeter Swans exhibited. I couldn't see
distinct yellow because of the light, but at one point, I think I
might have caught a hint of yellow; anyway, something that looked
paler than black and did not appear to be a specular highlight (the
paler spot looked to me to be more nonreflective than a specular
highlight). In the past, I would have said Tundra for sure, but ever
since I saw Martha's photos (posted Dec. 16) I have been thrown for a
loop. Some of her photos of Tundra Swans look so trumpeteresque; were
it not for the yellow dots on the bills (and the unlikelihood of
Trumpeters appearing in numbers in the region where the photos were
taken), I think many of us would ID them as Trumpeters.

I was muttering to myself about the finer points of swan
identification yesterday when a nonbirder happened by. "Swans here?"
she asked, having caught a piece of my one self arguing with my other
self, both out loud. (I will point out that in times of yore, such uni-
conversations would have made audiences start back-pedaling out of a
conviction that there was no knowing the outer limits of the speaker's
outre behavior, but nowadays, listeners just assume you're hooked up
to a cellphone.)

I told her we have 19 swans visiting now, which she could see for
herself if she trotted down the trail a piece, but, I cautioned, at
least one might be a different species. She was supremely indifferent
to this point. "Swans!" she said in an awed voice, and was off.

It made me realize that while precise identifications of bird species
do matter to many of us, and they matter for very cogent reasons of
science, not to mention personal goals of listing, at another level,
they matter not at all. Swans of any sort are wondrous creatures. The
fact that we host them in the heart of a major city is even more
miraculous. - Connie, Seattle

constancesidles at gmail.com
www.constancypress.com
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