Retired teacher Kenny Nations, who took this photo, helps maintain the areas the trumpeter swans have claimed as their winter homes. KENNY NATIONS
Category: Cover Story

Trumpeter stats and facts

Wingspan: 6 to 10 feet

Weight: 15 to 30 pounds

Lifespan: Up to 24 years

Male name: Cob

Female name: Pen

Juvenile name: Cygnet

Term for a group: Bevy

Term in flight: Wedge

Term on the ground: Bank

Arkansas awaits the return of the trumpeters

Arkansas’ most captivating winter visitors fly to The Natural State from the distant north around the end of each November. They stay three months or so, attracting admirers to their seasonal Cleburne County home on three small lakes a half-dozen miles east of Heber Springs.

Trumpeter swans in fog. DEBBIE CANNON FRITSCHE

They are trumpeter swans. Their celebrity status reflects their stature as North America’s largest waterfowl, weighing 15 to 30 pounds with wings spanning 6 to 10 feet. Their snowy white plumage as adults would suit them for the starring role in Hans Christian Andersen’s timeless fairy tale about the gorgeous swan long scorned wrongly as an ugly duckling.

A trumpeter swan hides its face with its wing while grooming. LEAH SMITH

“What makes trumpeters so amazing is their size, but also their beauty and their grace in flight,” says Karen Rowe, bird conservation program coordinator for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. “They have real strength, as seen when they take off from the water. Their trumpeting call is the source of their name. It’s sometimes musical, and it’s wonderful to hear.”

Trumpeter swans were common in Arkansas two centuries ago, but settlers found them to be easy hunting. Rowe points out, “They are huge birds, easy to hit, and they produced a lot of food as well as feathers.”

By the 1880s, migrating trumpeters were gone from Arkansas. By 1930, fewer than 70 were known to exist anywhere in the United States or Canada. Extinction seemed to loom. Then, work by various wildlife agencies and the Trumpeter Swan Society gradually rebuilt the wild population, now estimated to be as many as 50,000 birds.

Swan lakes

Swans walking on water. LEAH SMITH

The first winter migrants reported in Arkansas were three trumpeters seen early in 1992 at privately owned Magness Lake. A fenced viewing location with parking exists along Hays Road, where much smaller waterfowl species sometimes mingle with the swans on the 30-acre oxbow lake.

In the mid-1990s, two swan-friendly artificial lakes were created a few miles southeast of Magness on the property of Verlon Abrams, a former Arkansas commander of the American Legion.

“Verlon is the unsung hero of our local swans,” Rowe says. “His lakes have become so popular that they are marked on Google Maps.”

After the digging of the unnamed 14-acre and 22-acre lakes off Hiram Road, Abrams placed shoreline corn feeders to attract the trumpeters. There are no fences, and the swans seem accustomed to close-range viewers. On some days, more swans can be seen here than at Magness Lake. The overall total last winter was 300 or more.

Two man-made lakes off of Hiram Road in Heber Springs give visitors an up-close look at the trumpeter swans. MARCIA SCHNEDLER

Abrams died in September 2023. His lakes are being maintained for the trumpeters by his daughter, Vicki Owens, with the invaluable help of retired teacher Kenny Nations. As longtime friends of the Abrams family, Nations and Terry Butler have continued filling the lakeside feeders with the corn that is a favored swan food. They’ve also kept watch on the sites.

“Trumpeters are very docile, and they don’t seem to mind visitors,” says Nations, who also helps maintain the Magness Lake viewing area. “I sometimes monitor the shoreline and caution people if they’re getting too close or misbehaving, like throwing things in the water.”

Owens describes the swans as “very entertaining while communicating with each other and their juveniles. They often squabble, and you will see them chasing each other while nipping. It’s also a sight to see these large birds coming in for a landing with their amazing glide across the water.”

Birds of a feather

Scattered swan sightings have occurred elsewhere in Arkansas. But Rowe says that the Cleburne County trumpeters “are the only large winter gathering in Arkansas. They are also the southernmost large migrating population in the United States.”

It is unknown why the first swans three decades ago settled at Magness Lake. The species is almost entirely vegetarian, feeding on leaves and stems of aquatic plants. The shallow Cleburne County lakes provide ample food, supplemented by the corn that Nations and Butler stock in the winter. At the two lakes, swans consume at least 10 tons of corn each winter.

The increasing winter swan count here is explained by Rowe as a generational process: “The juvenile swans learn the route from their parents. Later, they bring along their own offspring — and so on and so on.”

Trumpeter swans coming in for a landing at Magness Lake, Heber Springs. DEBBIE SMITH

The young swans, known as cygnets, can be distinguished from the all-white adults by their gray or brown plumage patches. Adults usually mate for life at age 3 or 4. They normally stay with their offspring for the first year or so.

Nations, who has become an avid photographer of the trumpeters, suggests that the best time of day to take their picture “is very late afternoon or the evening with the sun behind you.” He reminds visitors “not to feed the swans corn by hand. Don’t ever feed them bread or other human food. And always keep your dogs in your vehicle.”

It is an open question whether flocks of trumpeter swans will continue wintering in Arkansas in the years and decades ahead. The species has made a remarkable comeback, but its future survival is threatened, principally by loss of habitat to human incursion.

Their uncertain fate is yet another reason to visit the Cleburne County lakes this winter.

 

Tracking the trumpeters

Magness Lake: Drive east on Arkansas 110 from its intersection with the Arkansas 5/25 Bypass just east of Heber Springs. Go 4 miles to Sovereign
Grace Baptist Church, marked with a white sign. Turn left onto paved Hays Road. Go a half mile to Magness Lake, which has a parking area on the right.

The Abrams Lakes: From the Arkansas 5/25 intersection, head east for 2 1/2 miles on Arkansas 110. Turn right on Hiram Road, marked with a small “Swans” sign, to reach the first lake created by Verlon Abrams in about 4 miles and his second pond in another mile.

The Heber Springs Chamber of Commerce provides updates on the presence of the swans. Visit heber-springs.com or facebook.com/HeberSprings
Chamber.