Christmas Eve morning as I was trying to beat the last-minute rush to Walmart in Rexburg when I heard the unmistakable call of some trumpeter swans and then their wings beating the water as they left the Teton River. They had spent the night resting the night in the protective confines of the water, but hunger pains were calling for some food. Different family groups began leaving every two or three minutes apart with a lone Snow goose joining one of them.
During the recent unusually warm month, hundreds of trumpeters have been feeding on the rotten potatoes on the bench east of Rexburg as well as in fields all the way to Shelley. With no frost in the ground, the swans find the leftover spuds easy picking as the warm weather also allowed farmers to work the fields. This exposed many of the small, tasty morsels that would have been frozen in the ground, out of reach for these huge birds.
It appears the swans prefer the rotted potatoes more than wheat, corn or other seeds planted at Deer Parks Wildlife Management Area, west of the Menan Buttes. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game plants fields of these seeds and does not harvest all of them so that the wintering swans and the spring migrating waterfowl can have them to eat. Normally, at this time of year, thousands of trumpeters can be seen feeding at Deer Parks WMA, but last week, when I visited that area, I did not see a single swan feeding on the grain and corn.
If we get the predicted cold and some snow during this next week, the easy pickings may be short-lived, but they will still have the saved grains to live on. There are some species of birds and animals that may be caught by the cold weather, as some of them have not migrated during this warm weather.
There are thousands of American robins still hanging out here. On Christmas Day, there were robins harvesting nightcrawlers on lawns in Rexburg. I even picked up a few of them because of the lack of snow and no frozen ground. I have also seen Marsh wrens, a few Snow geese, and even a Mountain bluebird, and my winter birds have not shown up in the numbers that I usually have at Christmas.
The most northern flickers that I have had this winter were three; the steller's jays, pine siskins, crossbills, and waxwings have not visited my backyard yet. If the area ponds freeze over in the next week, there are still a lot of summer and fall ducks around that will have to move or work harder instead of enjoying the open water.
We will be conducting the first official count of the winter with the Rexburg Christmas Bird Count this Saturday, Dec.27, and the Howe Christmas Bird Count on Jan. 3. I am looking forward to both of them, because it appears that the lack of voles and the missing ice and frozen ground may make the counts way off base. I think the trumpeter swan numbers will be consistent; they will only be counted in different areas.
I am praying for cold weather as my new ice fishing equipment may spoil if not used, and I am developing a strange twitch while I sleep. If we don't get ice on Ririe Reservoir soon, we may have to get boats out of winter storage.