The trumpeter swans return to Arkansas every year. So do the Macon Swanns.
When your dear friends move 620 miles and three states away, you miss them. And you will find most any excuse to go visit them, even if you have to invite yourself.
Lee and Karen Swann did just that a couple of years ago. Lee was flipping through the pages of an issue of Garden & Gun magazine when he noticed a calendar of events for Southern states.
He read about how hundreds of trumpeter swans — the rarest of swans and the largest waterfowl in North America — annually descend on three small lakes on a farm near the town of Heber Springs, Arkansas.
For the past 30 years, they have arrived around Thanksgiving and said their goodbyes by Valentine’s Day. It’s a spectacular display of nature, and folks visit the lakes to take in this visual wonder. On any given day during the winter months, you can find license plates from several states.
It didn’t take much convincing for Lee and Karen to contact their friends, Ray and Sadie Crumbley, who had moved from Middle Georgia to Central Arkansas to be closer to family.
“We’re coming to see you … and the swans … in February,’’ Lee and Karen informed the Crumbleys.
Yes, the Swanns were going to see the swans.
Over the years, they have embraced their last name with swan collectibles and jewelry. Although they don’t consider themselves avid bird watchers or card-carrying members of the Audubon Society, they do keep bluebirds and other feathered friends happy with feeders in the back yard.
When the Swanns moved to Macon 51 years ago, they found a flock of other Swanns (and Swans) in the phone book but were not related to any of them. Lee was from Tennessee, and Karen grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a few blocks from Bryant-Denny football stadium.
They weren’t kin to the Arkansas swans, either.
But they took off to see the trumpeter swans for the first time last year and went back this year. These beautiful birds get their name from the shape of their necks and the sound of their honks. (No, they’re not right “wing’’ Donald Trumpeter supporters.)
The Swanns recently returned from another intriguing adventure to Heber Springs, located about an hour from the Crumbley’s home in Conway.
The migratory pattern of the swans is unusual. They are native to the northern states in the U.S., including Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, along with Alaska and Canada. They rarely venture farther south of Ohio.
That changed in 1991 when three swans got knocked off course in a storm and ended up in Arkansas. The wayward birds landed in a small oxbow lake off the Little Red River called Magness Lake, which would become their winter home version of Swan Lake.
They came back the next year, and some of their buddies came with them,’’ Lee said.
The trumpeters are snow white, with a long, straight neck, a black wedge-shaped bill and a 7-foot wingspan.
They return every year, like the swallows of Capistrano.
And Macon’s Swanns look forward to returning every year to see them.
Ed Grisamore teaches journalism at Stratford Academy in Macon. His column appears on Sundays in The Telegraph. Contact him at edgrisamore@gmail.com.