Family-Outdoors

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) As I walked closer, four trumpeter swans paddled effortlessly to the far side of the open water. An aerator keeps an area of this pond from icing over. Displaying their nonchalance, one or two cut loose with their namesake ‘trumpet’ calls. More like a French horn, I guess. “They’re just beautiful to watch; kind of entertaining. We’ve actually had them walk up in the yard. That, we didn’t expect,” recalls Sandy Tull. She and husband Terry Tull look out on a real-life wildlife canvas from their home just outside Sheffield, in northern Iowa. The female swans are here for the long run; sustaining injuries which prevent their return to the wild. Since they can’t fly, they need to be kept near open water—a buffer zone against predators—and have feed. The Tulls provide those. The DNR keeps track of them; perhaps to match them with mates to bolster the agency’s restoration program. That involvement, though, is being scaled back from 10 or 15 years ago...