Wild Delicate Seconds: 29 Wildlife Encounters

Trumpeter Swans

Trumpeter Swans 102 Trumpeter Swans January 1st and two dozen trumpeter swans sit on their own reflections: preening, resting, dunking their faces into the glass-still water. I watch from a well-hidden blind, the swans passing back and forth in slow unison, each one a prince, a princess, royalty riding a chariot of reflected clouds.As always they are dressed in their ballroom whites and a stateliness surrounds them, their dignity a thing to behold.With grim pride they periscope their heads into the sky, their tall necks thick as my wrist and not a degree off plumb. From oil-drop eyes their face masks sweep out, blending into shovel-shaped beaks, and when they lower their heads they cobra their necks, turning them like a coil of white rope to drape over the snowy heaps of their backs. Give credit where credit is due.There are no angles or rough edges to these birds. They are all curves and smoothness and grace.Their backs are deeply cleaved, a single furrow running down the middle forming two distinct halves,and in the glittering sun small beads of water roll down the tubes of their necks to pebble on their backs, clear as diamonds. A thing of beauty is not to be ignored, and when the swans leave, honking and slapping wingtips on the water, they fly in front of the wall of adjacent mountains like a string of white pearls.Evolution,we’re told,is an on-going process.It is but part way through.Watching the swans, it is hard to believe. J ...