No twitchable news here, sorry. A couple of weeks back folks in Hocking County were upset to hear that Division of Wildlife staff had shot the mute swans that had so prominently inhabited Lake Logan in Hocking County. DOW has been eradicating small populations of this invasive European species for years in Ohio, always in a discreet way. Attractive they may be, these swans pose significant challenges for native birds and their food sources; they are aggressive and fully capable of killing other waterfowl, and have been known to attack people. They eat large amounts of native aquatic vegetation, and have no legal protections. Naive visitors found it easy to relish the sight of these huge white creatures that came to beg food, but were unaware of their impact on Lake Logan. Because mutes are conspicuous, it was just as obvious that they had disappeared, and DOW's usually discreet removals were noticed. The Logan Daily News was barraged with complaints, and the DOW offered some justifications. Some observers asked why the swans were not relocated and were told, quite logically, that it would have been only transplanting a problem elsewhere. Complicating the DOW's case was their ballyhooed "reintroduction" of trumpeter swans--a bona fide North American swan species--but in Ohio, where no Ohio breeding history is established. Trumpeters can be just as destructive as mutes here. DOW transplanted trumpeters in a number of places in Ohio--not Lake Logan--and they have persisted in a couple of spots, notably in a remote area in Federal property at Ottawa NWR. There is no good evidence that they ever nested in Ohio, but weak reports were accepted in the interest of transplanting a spectacular big white species as "ambassadors of wetlands". Bud Simpson's weekly outdoors column in the Daily News concluded thus: "How strange it seems to get rid of Mute swans and "re-introduce" another swan species, the Trumpeter swan, that history shows to be another "non-native" species that never lived or bred here. How sad!" Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: listserv.miamioh.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]