Letter to the editor:
About Gronk
I am indebted to Dennis Forsyth for the following:
This swan was born on the marsh at Bob and Velda Parsons farm between 1998 and 2000. Making it at least 25 years old which is getting up there for a swan. In ’97 I was part of a team who were censusing Canada Geese and Swans as we tried to assess how successful population recovery programs on Vancouver Island had been. In that winter a Mute Swan suddenly appeared on Windy Marsh. Obviously an escape from somewhere as they are not native here. This swan moved in with a half-dozen Trumpeters who hung out there. In the spring it bonded with one of the Trumpeters and when the Trumpeters left for their northern breeding ground it and its new mate stayed here. Mutes don’t migrate. The Mute turned out to be a female and nested on the marsh. To our consternation she and her mate produced two babies. We assumed that they would be sterile as hybrids and that seems to have been the case. In the next two years they produced five more young. Some of them fell victim to predation and some of them left here and moved to Deep Bay. The Mute female was killed by something on the marsh in late 2000 and her Trumpeter mate resumed migrating with the next batch of Trumpeters. The one remaining hybrid has been here ever since. For most of the year it keeps company with the ducks and geese on Morrison south of the road, when there are Trumpeters around it will join them temporarily. Of course we don’t know this swan’s gender. Its voice is somewhere between the minimal hissing sounds of a Mute and the clarion song of a Trumpeter. A raspy, hoarse sort of honk. This led Velda Parsons to name it Gronk. A strange story and since Gronk seems perfectly healthy right now, one that may continue for another few years.
Mark Prior
