Loud, Bossy and Pecky - Monticello Swans

You know the story..you start feeding a couple of birds in winter..then next winter they bring their relatives, the year after that they bring the in-laws and before you know it, 200 birds come for dinner every day. This story is like that..just with swans. The first swans showed up at Monticello, Minnesota in the winter of 1986, as the late Sheila Lawrence was feeding the ducks and geese in the yard of her riverside home. Every year more came until now when more than 2,000 trumpeter swans winter around Monticello. Each day, many take advantage of the buffet at the Lawrence house, consuming up to 1600 pounds of corn, with a little help from ducks and geese. The swans tolerate only Jim Lawrence, who took over for Sheila when she died in 2011. They are big, loud, pecky and bossy and with their long necks they are tall enough to look you in the eye...that is why I stayed behind a fence.