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The Swans of Winter
Portsmouth, NH  Seacoast natives are used to seeing swans in Great Bay, but this frigid winter week they were flocking around the South End of Portsmouth. Spotters counted up to 50 birds who have moved closer to the mouth of the Piscataqua as their home waters have been freezing up as far as Adam’s Point on Great Bay. Amateur photographers Norm O’Neill and Louise Giordani found this group nosing around for food outside their house with the temperature hovering at zero degrees and a wind chill factor at –20. Neighbors had been offering the swans, and accompanying ducks, up to 100 pounds of cracked corn a day. We checked with the NH Fish and Game Department to see why these guys don’t head somewhere warmer for the winter. Eric Orff told us that the Seacoast swans are descended from birds kept as pets and have lost their instinct to fly further than their home region. Like the ducks, they don’t mind winter, but range further in winter in search of food and unfrozen habitat.
There are thousands of swans, Orff says, along the New England
coastline. Not a protected species, they are popular with residents
and tourists, but troublesome to the environment. The swans dig up
eelgrass, kill ducks that come within their two-acre territory and
have been known to attack admirers. The male, or cob, will literally
attack a canoe, crashing into it, if angered during the spring
mating season. The population is currently monitored and kept at a
minimum through "birth control" according to Orff, without which the
species could quickly grow to hundreds, even thousands of birds, he
says.
All photos by Norman O'Neil and Louise Giordani |
PO Box 7158
Portsmouth, New Hampshire 03802
URL: http://www.SeacoastNH.com
Voice: 603-427-2020
Email: info@SeacoastNH.com
