RESEARCHERS TO TEACH SWANS HOW TO MIGRATE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, January 2, 1992                   TAG: 9201020131
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: D.W. PAGE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WARRENTON                                LENGTH: Medium
RESEARCHERS TO TEACH SWANS HOW TO MIGRATE
An expert on penguins and a Canadian sculptor who flies with geese have a novel plan for returning the trumpeter swan to Virginia.
Dr. William Sladen and Bill Lishman want to teach the trumpeters how and where to migrate.
There are about 14,000 of the huge, white birds left in the wild, said David Weaver, executive secretary of the Trumpeter Swan Society.
The trumpeters are the largest of all waterfowl, weighing as much as 40 pounds. They are found in central Alaska during the summer and they winter in Washington state, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.
Sladen, director of swan research at the Airlie center in Warrenton, believes the only way the birds will be brought back to their former range, which included the East Coast, is if swans raised in captivity can make it in the wild.
The problem, said Sladen, is birds raised in captivity have no idea of how to migrate. Sladen and other researchers believe the wild birds are shown the migratory route by their parents.
"The reason why there hasn't been too much success in restoring the trumpeter is when the young leave the nest they don't have any parents to teach them the migration route," he said.
"Where you are born you stay unless you are shown the way by your parents."
That's where Lishman comes in.
In 1988, Lishman realized a lifelong dream of flying with geese. He raised a dozen Canada geese, imprinting them on the sound of his ultralight aircraft.
Several times a day when the birds were small chicks, Lishman would lead the birds on a walk while carrying a tape recorder playing the sounds of his craft's engine.
Soon the birds were following the craft down the runway at Lishman's home near Toronto.
When the birds were able to fly, they did so with the ultralight, forming up on the craft in the typical V-formation.
"It's absolutely thrilling, a unique visual treat," said Lishman of his flights with the geese. "Seeing every feather and every gesture of wing as they cruise through the sky is an amazing and humbling experience."
Sladen, who has made numerous trips to Antarctica to study penguins, said when he heard of Lishman's flight it occurred to him that he may have a solution to his trumpeter swan dilemma.
He had been breeding the birds for 15 years, but was not satisfied with efforts to establish a wild population in the eastern United States.
He proposed doing with trumpeter swans what Lishman had done with geese, and use the ultralight to lead the swans on their migratory route.
Instead of making the nearly 4,000-mile migration from Alaska to the Chesapeake Bay, Sladen and Lishman are looking at a route from Toronto to Virginia.
"Our most pressing problem right now is wintering areas," said the swan society's Weaver. "Development is removing a lot of the former habitat. We need a way to get the swans to safe winter habitat.
"This may be a way to do it. How will we know unless we try?"

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB