Up Trumpeter

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service patted itself on the back. It had saved from extinction North America's biggest wild bird, the trumpeter swan. Once the trumpeters ranged over much of the U.S., flying in grand formations like long-necked B-295. But their brilliant white plumage and 8-ft. wingspread made them barndoor targets. Their flesh was tasty, their feathers salable.

In intelligence the trumpeters were fair, but at reproduction they were sluggish. They grew scarcer & scarcer until, in 1935, there were only 73. They no longer wintered in southern feeding grounds, but huddled, half-starving, on spring-warmed patches of open water in Rocky Mountain lakes.

Then the U.S. Government swung into action. Guards protected the swans at their refuges, in Yellowstone Park and Red Rock Lakes, Mont., shoveled out hundreds of bushels of grain in winter; built towers from which in spring they tom-peeped at the nesting areas.

The swans gobbled up the grain, ignored the peeping toms. Old swans and young did their best for the race. Last summer the guards kept tabs on 17 happy couples, watched 50 cygnets hatched.

The Wildlife Service did not relax, but it felt the tide had turned. By this year's count, the trumpeter population was up to 301, most of them young and ambitious.

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