I have been trying all this past winter to get close enough to get some good photos of the Trumpeter Swan. Now, this pair shows up in a lake I go to all the time. They came right close to me. I felt like a kid in a candy store with these beautiful birds.

Trumpeter swans originally graced wetlands across a broad region of North America from Illinois northwest to Alaska. Throughout the 17- and 1800s, swans were hunted for their meat, skins and feathers. At the same time trumpeter swan habitat diminished as settlers moved across North America. By the 1880s, trumpeter swans disappeared from Minnesota. And by the 1930s, only 69 trumpeter swans remained in the lower 48 states, living in the remote Red Rock Lakes area in southwestern Montana.

Thanks to the work of many agencies and organizations and generous donations from Minnesota taxpayers to the Nongame Wildlife Checkoff Fund, trumpeter swans are home again.