I will be the first to admit that putting the title of “Swan Song” on a piece about swans is a corny thing to do, but there was no other choice.  I wanted to talk about swan songs – specifically Tundra Swan songs- so what else could I do?  It probably would have been more insightful and clever to label this as “Call of the North,” “Tundra Tunes,” or “Winter Windpipes,” but then again it really doesn’t matter what I call it. “Pygmalion” was the original title of “My Fair Lady” and that didn’t affect the stage or theatre success of the musical, did it?  O.K. then, I’m here to talk about “Cygnus columbianus – the Musical.” 

  As you might expect, Tundra Swans are visitors from the high north (the north slope of Alaska & the Yukon territories).  They come south every winter to bide their time in the relative comfort of our southern cold season. Most of the migrating population flies to the east coast and Chesapeake Bay, but a significant number do their time here in the western end of Lake Erie at the mouth of the Detroit River.

Tundra Swans are large white birds – no surprise there (take a look at this pair of mature birds). The young birds retain their youthful gray head and neck feathers and a pinkish bill (see here in my portrait). Adults weight around 16 pounds and can stretch the tape at over 4 feet long from beak to tail. Their wingspan is over 7 feet, so there is nothing small about these northern visitors. The younger birds are pretty much full size as well. As big as they are, Tundras are still slightly smaller than the non-native Mute Swans.  The adult birds are best distinguished from those obnoxious year-round residents by their solid black beak with a speck of yellow near the eye. Mutes have an orange beak with a tremendous black knob near the face (I will explain why I think these birds are obnoxious at a later time when I discuss “Mute Swan – the Tragedy”).

  The single most distinctive thing about Tundra Swans is their sonorous voice which can carry for miles on a still winter day.  Mutes, in spite of their name, can make a few nasal vocalizations but they can’t hold a candle to their native cousins. The collective effort of a few hundred singing Tundra Swans creates an aural experience for the listener. Like a Himalayan mantra or a Gregorian chant, the vacillating tone envelops you.  When issued through a frosty river fog by ghostly shapes out on the river, the overall effect is just plain mesmerizing.

  It is difficult to describe the call. Some have characterized it as a “cooing” or a “whoohing” or even a “soft ringing bark.” I like that last description even though I have no idea what it means. I prefer to compare the sound to that issued by those winged monkeys in the Wizard of Oz – the movie.

  Ask any opera singer and they’ll tell you that a good voice is all in the pipes and the lungs (actually they will tell you to go away first, but in my musical they manage to snort out an answer). Let me tell you, Tundra Swans have great pipes. Their trachea (windpipe) is over 3 feet long.  Because their neck is less than 2 feet long, the windpipe tube needs to extend down below the breastbone, loop up into it, coil around inside it, come back out, and loop back over to enter the lungs. Take a look at my drawing of a tundra swan breastbone (sternum) to see how the trachea loops around inside the keel (the lower pipe end doubles back and extends up the throat while the top pipe end continues back over the sternum to the lungs). The similarity of this arrangement to the convolutions of a trumpet or trombone is no coincidence.

  I’d like you to look at another view of a swan’s breastbone. Both this example, and the one I sketched, came from two birds that literally sang their swan songs last winter. Both were found dead from starvation.  Fortunately, by examining their remains we can appreciate the living birds even more. This is an end-on view of the leading edge of a swan sternum.  Note the large cavity inside the keel where the wind pipe went.  Also note that this view looks like a laughing gargoyle (weird, eh?).

  While our opera diva creates her glass shattering effects by manipulating her voice box (larynx), the swan does it with a similar organ called a syrinx.  Unlike our voice box, the swan’s tone adjuster is deep within its chest at the point where the windpipe divides into two short bronchial tubes at the lungs. The human larynx creates an Adam’s apple throat lump, but swans can’t afford to have such a thing, so they locate it at the far end of the tube for aerodynamic reasons.

  The result of all this Tundra Swan tubing is a great symphonic sound. I can recommend that you make the trip to the Detroit River shore at Lake Erie Metropark to witness this firsthand.  You’ll need to do it before March because that’s when the fat lady sings and the orchestra moves north.