Swan Spectacles

          They first appeared as white scribbles in the late-winter sky, but soon their many lines and V's circled over the river, the stately birds whooping melodiously and majestically setting their large, powerful wings to wheel into the wind and glide to the water.  Then magnificent white sheets of tundra swans parachuted to the Susquehanna River at Washington Boro, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania as lightly as feathers.  Each flock, in its turn, followed the one before it like a feathered waterfall to the river, group after group after group, the reflections of the birds racing through the water to meet their impact.
     That happened several years ago when about 15,000 migrating tundra swans, pouring north as unstoppable from their wintering areas on the Chesapeake Bay and other points farther south as a burst dam, staged for about a month or more on shallow water among islands on the Susquehanna at Washington Boro during late winter into early spring.  The swans daily fed on corn kernels in harvested corn fields and the green blades of winter rye in fields east of Washington Boro.  The great, beautiful gatherings of swans made twice-daily excursions into the fields and back to the river to rest and digest, creating magnificent shows of themselves on the water, in the air and on the fields.                  In more recent years, however, up to 5,000 tundra swans annually stage on  a 400-acre, human-made lake at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area and feed in fields in southern Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, although some swans still annually stage on the Susquehanna.  And late February until sometime in March, depending on the weather, is the peak of their usual staging time in southeastern Pennsylvania.  Thwarted by ice and snow farther north, the swans are here a month or more, until spring catches up to their restless urges to push north to the Arctic tundra to reproduce.  And the beauty and splendor of these swans has given me many exciting and inspiring swan spectacles each late winter and early spring in Lancaster County for many years.
     Two swan spectacles that happened during moonlit nights stand out most vividly in my memory.  Late one sunny afternoon during the latter part of January, hundreds of tundra swans were feeding on winter rye in two inches of snow.  And just after sunset, little groups of swans took flight toward the red western sky, at intervals of several minutes, whooping noisily as they flew in V's and lines.  Flock after magnificent flock pumped low over the fields, heading into the sunset, the bitter wind and toward the Susquehanna River where they were going to settle for the night.  As the swans continued to rise from the fields, little by little, the sunset faded and the moon rose full and beautiful, casting its reflected sunlight on the snowy fields and the birds' white feathers.  The last swans in flight appeared ghostly against the darkening sky.  But their shadows gliding swiftly and silently across the moon-bathed fields, indicated they were not spectres 
     Under another crimson sunset early in March of a more recent year, many formations of tundra swans circled several adjoining fields about seven miles north of Lancaster City.  Flock after majestic flock in their noisy thousands, the swans came toward me in gatherings that stretched back to the red western horizon.  As each flock passed overhead, at intervals of a few minutes, I could hear the rhythmic swishing of their great, white pinions and their vocal croaking and groaning amid the din of their boisterous trumpeting.  Eventually each group swung gracefully into the wind and sailed gently to the fields to feed through the night.  Meanwhile, the sunset lost its ruddy brilliance and the moon rose almost full.  Still the swans came, the moonlight shining through their great wings as those noisy phantoms passed over me lying on my back in a harvested corn field.
     Tundra swans only winter in Lancaster County and migrate through it in early spring.  But they are sources of inspiration to anyone who experiences them.  Thankfully, they return to my home county every early spring.