Picked up the local paper this week to find that the Sunriver swans will hatch young soon. It has been months since we last prowled the nature center, so this week we changed that.
Sunriver’s Nature Center is tucked up against one end of a landing strip on the west side of the resort. It functions as an educational center with a variety of program offerings throughout the year. There is an excellent stellar observatory, an injured raptor sanctuary, and for us it’s a trail head.
The resort has an abundance of walking / biking trails. As you get near the Market area, bikes overrun paved tracks. However, out at the edges this isn’t the case. The nature center’s parking lot functions as a staging area for quick birding or some basic leg stretching.
Along with the usual migratory birds, there are resident ducks, nesting Redwinged Blackbirds, and a pair of Swans. In the fall of 2017, the male was shot and killed leaving just Gracie. Two years later, the center introduced Gus to the pond. It took a couple more years, but in June of 2022 the pair have produced at least three eggs. They expect the cygnets to hatch the first part of July.
They hadn’t hatched this week, but Gus and Gracie were staying close to their nesting site. The other interesting observation was the obvious work of some beaver. These nocturnal creatures have been busy gnawing down small pine trees along the pond’s edge. We’ll definitely return and spend some time seeking out a possible dam/den site, as well as checking up on the cygnets.