A different sort of traffic

We took a walk on Sunday on a trail in our little valley. The trail goes over a river and through some farmland; it is wide and flat and easy to walk on. In such situations we are always wary of bicycles sneaking up on us – I am easily startled – but were still surprised to suddenly hear honking noises behind us. This is a ‘no vehicles allowed’ trail but it sounded like the circus clowns were just driving through with their rubber-ball horns – honk-a, honk-a. We both jumped. And when we looked behind us, we saw two huge white birds flying low over the trail and coming up on us fast. Honk-a, Honk-a!!

How can that sort of noise come from a bird? Trumpeter swan, maybe? Tundra swan, possibly. Obviously I don’t know (we’ve been over this issue before) and the internet is not helping me much in identifying them, in part because I don’t have a very good picture to compare the finer points. But anyway…

We watched them glide into an old corn field and join what looked like a hundred others. Mixed in with them was another flock of big birds, Canadian geese, themselves a big bird but dwarfed by the swans. The racket was awful – but what a sight.