TRUMPETER TROUBLE: It was after sunset on a wet December evening when the call came: there was a trumpeter swan with an injured wing in a tiny pond deep in the forest on Texada Island.
Powell River Orphaned Wildlife Society’s intrepid Texada volunteer was contacted, and she went straight out, picking her way up logging roads then on foot to find the spot.
They found the swan with little difficulty, using their flashlights. Mich walked over to the young sleeping bird and dropped a blanket over it. There was no resistance when she picked him up to carry him back to the truck.
A quick call to PROWLS to consult on when to send the swan over found complete agreement on both sides. PROWLS would wait until the following morning to put it on the ferry. In the meantime, MARS Wildlife Rescue in Courtenay was contacted to arrange for the trumpeter to go directly to them. PROWLS does not have the facilities for such a large water bird, and MARS does a great job.
PROWLS’ president Merrilee Prior met the Texada ferry the next morning and was grateful for the thoughtful assistance of the ferry staff in coordinating a dolly to carry the young but very large and heavy swan onto the Comox ferry for the next leg of the journey. All went as planned, and the exam at MARS showed that it was under weight and had a possible injured shoulder.
Swans require a long runway to lift off, and the small pond he landed in did not allow him to get back up. Who knows how long he had been there? We do know, though, that if the finder had not called PROWLS, this lovely trumpeter swan would soon have died deep in the forest.
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