Trumpeter swans making way to Arkansas
The best things in life are free, so the saying goes. Sometimes they are also unplanned.
Arkansas has gained two examples that have become genuine tourism attractions — elk and trumpeter swans.
The elk were planned as a restoration of a departed species, but the popularity of viewing them was not foreseen back in 1981. The trumpeter swans just showed on their own in 1992 on a little oxbow lake near Heber Springs and have grown in numbers ever since.
Today, visitors come from miles around to look at the elk and the swans.
Dr. Larry Jernigan is a Heber Springs chiropractor who spends hours of his free time photographing the big and stately swans near his home.
“I have met people from all over the country and all over the world out here looking at the swans,” he said recently.
There are probably more swans wintering in the Heber Springs vicinity these days than were on hand in olden times when the birds moved back and forth in the Mississippi River valley.
And the swans are not all residing at little Magness Lake, that 30-acre cutoff of the nearby Little Red River. Swans are being seen several other places in north-central Arkansas, and some are taking advantage of another new development — natural gas production.
A by-product of Fayetteville Shale gas activity is the building of ponds for water supplies needed in the “fracking” process. The ponds have been constructed by landowners who sell the water to the drilling companies. When drilling is finished, then the landowners have handy livestock ponds.
And trumpeter swans have an attractive site to spend cold weather times in Arkansas without overcrowding Magness Lake.
Indications are that the trumpeter swans are not using disposal ponds near the drilling sites. These are where chemical-laden fracking water is held until it can be dispersed.
Trumpeter swans are one of two species native to the United States. The other are tundra swans, similar in appearance but slightly smaller. Both trumpeters and tundras have black bills. Trumpeters have a red “grin” line on their bills, and tundras have yellow spots on each side of their bills. Swan imports are mute swans from Europe that are often seen in parks and have yellow bills and black swans from Australia, also a park, zoo and estate item.
The former owner of Magness Lake and land around it was Perry Linder of Heber Springs, and he cared for the big visiting birds like they were his children. Linder sold the property a few years ago to the Eason family. Larry Eason is now deceased, and his widow Pat and son Brian continue the hosting and supplemental feeding of the swans each November through February.
Trumpeter swans disappeared years ago except in the northern Rocky Mountains and Alaska. They were restored a few decades back in Minnesota and have spread to Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Ontario and Ohio. Swans are now wintering in Missouri and Arkansas and in lesser numbers in several other surrounding states.
Trumpeter swans are the largest waterfowl in North America, weighing 25 to 30 pounds. Wing span is about 8 feet. In comparison, the giant subspecies of Canada geese living in Arkansas weigh about 12 pounds. Snow geese weigh about 7 pounds.
A male trumpeter is called a cob. The female is called a pen and the young of the year are called cygnets. Adult males and females are similar in appearance — white with black bills, legs and feed. Juvenile trumpeters are gray. As the young birds become older, the gray is splotched with white. Both adults and juveniles may have heads and necks stained with yellow or brown tones, a result of diving underwater for aquatic vegetation to eat.
The established trumpeter swan viewing area is at Magness Lake, a small oxbow off Little Red River east of Heber Springs. Drive east on Arkansas Highway 110 from its intersection with Arkansas 5 and Arkansas 25 just east of Heber Springs. Go 3.9 miles from the intersection to Sovereign Grace Baptist Church, on the right and marked with a white sign. Turn left on Hays Road, a paved county road. Magness Lake is about a half-mile down this road, and a gravel parking area is at an S curve in the road.
Joe Mosby is the retired news editor of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Arkansas’ best known outdoor writer. His work is distributed by the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. He can be reached by email at jhmosby@cyberback.com.
