The real reason we headed out early yesterday morning was not for the sunrise of my last post, but to see the Tundra Swans take off. We did not get to see where they spent the night or lift off but did catch them in air well after the sun was up.

Around three hundred Tundra Swans are known to winter within South Carolina’s Bear Island Wildlife Management Area, likely descendants of a group that first came here in the 1970s with a flock of Canada Geese.

The Swans flew over us in small groups, mostly headed down the coast. During the day they spread out through the ACE Basin (Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto River Basin), 350,000 acres of mostly marshes and wetlands, to feed. They return to Bear Island WMA each night.

The Tundra Swans will leave SC by early March headed toward their breeding grounds in the Arctic.