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While looking at the webcams on Sunday morning, I happened to notice that the swans were hanging around in front of the cabin again, so I took a drive out on Sunday to have a look. As I had hoped, the swans were still around and didn't seem to be too worried about me - so I hung around and took a few pictures and a few minutes of video. Here's one of the pictures that I took... This was the last day with open water - as the lake was completely frozen over by the next morning.
I did a bit of research last year on the trumpeter swans and found out a few interesting things.
Swans need open water to feed throughout the winter. This means that once it gets too difficult to find open water at Lakelse Lake, they may move a bit closer to the coast. Lakelse Lake does have many creeks running into the lake that stay open a good part of the winter, so that helps as well.
The temperatures here don't bother them too much. They have 5 cm of down that is an excellent insulator, and they're quite happy down to about -30 or so (which is colder than it usually gets here).
This is about as far south as these swans will get this winter - I believe that this group is one that summers and breeds in Alaska and winters on the North coast.
I'm not sure if we'll see any more swans on the Lakelse webcams this year, but it doesn't hurt to look! |
