Thanks to some compassionate Peterborough residents, this past Wednesday (June 4) was a good day for local wildlife.
It began two days earlier when Karen Hjort-Jensen and Peter Hewitt discovered a trumpeter swan that was behaving abnormally along the trail beside the Trent canal, just south of the swing bridge on Parkhill Road.
Hjort-Jensen, who walks along the canal with Hewitt most days, says that while they have seen swans on other parts of the trail, they had never seen one in that area before. Other residents later told the couple that the swan had been there all weekend.
The swan seemed “remarkably unbothered” by their presence as they walked by but, when Hjort-Jensen and Hewitt saw (and stopped) a group of teenage girls who were “harassing” the swan by waving their arms and kicking gravel, they knew they had to do something to help the bird.
“It’s a very, very popular path and a lot of people go by with dogs and bikes, so we thought that maybe we just needed to try and figure out something for the swan,” Hjort-Jensen says. “It seemed to be functioning quite adequately. It was eating, it was cleaning itself, and it didn’t seem stressed at all. It was just in a location where it hadn’t been before.”
Trumpeter swans, which are the heaviest and longest-living bird species native to North America, almost went extinct by 1933 until reintroductions by wildlife agencies and the Trumpeter Swan Society gradually restored the North American wild population to over 46,000 birds by 2020.
Hjort-Jensen guesses she and Hewitt sat with the swan for at least two hours as they made phone calls to various local organizations they thought could help. Through Trumpeter Swan Conservation Ontario, they connected with Steve Paul.
While he is best known as the founder of the grassroots environmental group Clean Up Peterborough, Paul has been “hooked” on swans and a volunteer for the organization since 2020 when he grew an affection for one that was living near Trent University.
When he arrived at the trail on Monday, he assessed the swan for lead poisoning but did not find any signs.
“When we were looking at the trumpeter swan, he seemed super healthy and alert, looking around, though obviously he wasn’t moving away from people,” Paul says.
“I started thinking that one of the things you don’t want to do is capture a healthy swan and drive an hour and a half away only to find it’s healthy, but we ended up seeing some wing movements and it looked like there was something off about its left wing, like it couldn’t fully extend it.”
Paul then called Shades of Hope Wildlife Refuge in Pefferlaw in the Town of Georgina, just west of Kawartha Lakes. However, given the demands the refuge was facing and the time of day, the trio were unable to take the swan there on Monday.
On Tuesday, the swan was in the embankment of a beaver pond, but on Wednesday it had wandered back up to the trail where Hjort-Jensen and Hewitt were waiting. They called Paul so they could capture the bird.
“Pete was already within about six feet of it, just trying to keep an eye on it and make sure that no dogs or joggers were going to bother it,” Paul says.
“I just let the swan feel relaxed and it was trying to preen itself. When it turned a blind eye to me, I got a towel to wrap around it so it couldn’t flap its wings and then I carried it to the carrier.”
Hjort-Jensen says Paul asked her if she wanted to say “hello” to the swan — which Paul guesses to be around two years old based on its all-white colouring, though he doesn’t know its gender — but when she moved towards the swan, the bird gave its first and only sign of being “agitated.”
“I got up close and that was the only time we saw him bothered, like he really didn’t like me coming up that close to him,” Hjort-Jensen says, noting she then moved away. “(The swan) was quite heavy, so it took two of them with two handles on the crate to carry him to Steve’s car.”
From there, Paul went on the 90-minute drive to Shades of Hope, where the swan remains. The trio have yet to receive further updates on the swan or its wing condition.
While that would be enough heroism in one day for most of us, Paul wasn’t done yet. On the way to Shades of Hope, he stopped his car to help escort a snapping turtle across the road.
“I picked it up and just carried it across the way it was going and took it down in the ditch area so it would be close to water again,” he says, noting he regularly helps with turtle crossings.
After he delivered the swan to the wildlife refuge, Paul asked Shades of Hope if there were supplies or animals they needed to go to Peterborough, because he knows how much the sanctuary works with other partners across Ontario. He was given a painted turtle to deliver to the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre in Peterborough.
When it comes to helping wildlife, Paul’s good deeds are not over yet. He hopes to pick up the trumpeter swan from Shades of Hope, return it to Peterborough, and potentially tag it for Trumpeter Swan Conservation Ontario.
If that happens, Paul says he hopes Hjort-Jensen and Hewitt will name the bird.
After all, Hjort-Jensen has now been inflicted with “swan-itis” — a term Paul learned through the organization that refers to the affection that comes from being around a swan.
“It’s a really relevant term, because everyone that gets a chance to be that close to them usually starts getting interested in them,” he says.
As for Hjort-Jensen, she says the swan encounter was an eye-opening experience that has added to her interest in birds.
“I’m fascinated with sandhill cranes and now I’ve got another species of birds I’m fascinated with — I hadn’t known a lot about trumpeter swans before,” she says. “It was really great to meet Steve and to know that there’s a whole network and community of people I knew nothing about that are supporting the swan population.”
