On March 18, 2013, a Star Tribune photographer stood on the bank of the Mississippi in Monticello and photographed hundreds of trumpeter swans calling at once. They were packed so tightly that the river barely showed between them. The Minnesota Star Tribune still runs that image in its 2025 guide to winter swan viewing, and it remains how many people picture a Monticello winter.
That scene came out of a specific arrangement that no longer exists. The swans still do. In the January 2025 count they turned up by the hundreds across northern Wright County, on open stretches of river, on lakes and in harvested fields. Seeing the whole flock now takes a different approach than parking on Mississippi Drive, and the clearest view of it comes once a year, on a date already on the calendar.
What the corn built, and why it stopped
For 35 winters, trumpeter swans were fed corn along the riverbank at Swan Park on Mississippi Drive. Sheila Lawrence started the tradition in the 1980s, and her husband Jim later kept it going. The Monticello Times reported that the gatherings could reach 2,000 birds and turned the park into a winter destination for visitors from across the region.
The feeding ended in 2020. Before it did, Jim Lawrence and city staff met with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Minnesota DNR and The Trumpeter Swan Society, and the paper reported that the group agreed ending the program was best for the swans. The reasons the city presented to the council came down to four concerns:
- A reliable food source gave the birds less reason to migrate.
- A diet of nothing but corn crowded out the varied vegetation swans find when they forage on their own.
- Flocks of up to 2,000 birds in close contact could spread viral and bacterial disease and parasites.
- Birds that depended on people for food were becoming tamer and less wary of humans.
The city also told residents what to expect next. Rachel Leonard, then the city's communications director, said swans would still be seen on open water and in farm fields around Monticello, and added a prediction:
"But you'll probably not see thousands and thousands of birds as in the past."
Councilmember Charlotte Gabler compared the change to raising children. "We feed them. We grow them. And now we have to let them go," she told the council, according to the Monticello Times.
Leonard was predicting that the swans would stay in the area and spread out. That changes what counts as "the swans in Monticello," and some older travel listings haven't caught up. A few still list a daily 10:30 a.m. feeding from mid-December through March, years after that schedule ended.
Where the swans turn up now
Statewide, there are more trumpeters now than there were when the feeding ended. When the program ended, the city described as many as 30,000 swans in Minnesota. The state's most recent survey, in 2022, put the figure at 51,860, and the Star Tribune notes that many of them stay year-round and gather in large flocks in winter. The same guide still lists the Mississippi River near Monticello among the state's popular viewing areas, alongside the St. Croix near Hudson and the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
The local picture comes from the Audubon Christmas Bird Count. Its Northern Wright County circle takes in Monticello, Buffalo, Silver Creek, Maple Lake and Chatham, plus parts of Marysville, Corinna and Rockford townships. "Because the circle includes the Mississippi River, we see a large number of trumpeter swans, Canada geese and other waterfowl," Claudia Egelhoff, who organized the counts, told the Monticello Times.
The two most recent counts, published by the Minnesota Ornithologists' Union, show both how many swans there are and how much the number moves from year to year:
| Count | Date | Trumpeter swans | Common goldeneye | Canada geese |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 Christmas Bird Count | Jan. 4, 2025 | 632 | 160 | 202 |
| 2025 Christmas Bird Count | Jan. 3, 2026 | 295 | 32 | 158 |
Both totals cover the whole circle, not one riverbank, so neither compares directly with the old 2,000-bird crowds at Swan Park. Still, 632 trumpeters counted in a single day across northern Wright County in January 2025 is a flock that never left. The drop the next January appears in other water birds too. Goldeneye fell from 160 to 32 over the same two counts, which suggests the swan total shifts with the same conditions that move every bird that needs open water.
Open water is the deciding factor. A trumpeter weighs 20 to 30 pounds and needs about 100 yards of open water to run across the surface and lift off, according to the Star Tribune. Ice cover decides where they can spend the winter. A recent unusually warm winter showed this well. Egelhoff told the Monticello Times that nearly 4,300 ducks and geese were counted on Pelican and Pulaski lakes because those lakes hadn't frozen. In the same count, a first-year family of counters found 92 trumpeter swans on a single lake at Succonix Wildlife Management Area near Clearwater.
Swans are still reported closer to town as well. A February 3, 2026 checklist on eBird logged five trumpeter swans at Montissippi County Park. The Star Tribune points to eBird and iNaturalist as the apps that track recent swan sightings, and those apps are now the closest thing to the old feeding schedule. They show which stretch of open water has birds this week.
January 2 is when the whole flock gets counted
Since the swans no longer gather in one spot, the best way to see them all is to help count them. The Northern Wright County circle's next count is set for Saturday, January 2, 2027, according to its Minnesota Ornithologists' Union count page. That's about nine weeks after this post goes up. The territory covers Lake Maria State Park, state wildlife management areas, Ney Nature Center, other county parks, woods, farmyards, harvested fields, backyards and the Mississippi River.
The organizers set up teams and territories ahead of time, so joining takes a little planning:
- Register through the circle's sign-up form on the MOU site.
- Choose between joining an area team in the field and counting birds at your own feeder or in your yard. The count page offers both.
- Get the Merlin Bird ID and eBird apps on your phone before the day. The first-year family told the Monticello Times the two apps together helped them pick out birds they could hear but not see, especially small woodpeckers.
The local count has a long track record. Ahead of that warm-winter count, Egelhoff told the Monticello Times, the circle had been surveyed 22 times, totaling 100,419 birds and averaging 41 species a year. She said about 25 people on nine teams, plus three people reporting from home feeders, worked the circle that year. The counting window runs from mid-December to early January, but the paper reported that the count has become something of a New Year's tradition. That year, a family of five hiked Lake Maria State Park on the morning of Jan. 1 and recorded red-bellied, hairy and downy woodpeckers.
The part of the old routine that still applies
The feeding ended partly over concern about disease in crowded flocks, and that concern hasn't gone away. The Minnesota DNR's avian influenza page says H5N1 was detected in Minnesota wild birds in 2022, kept circulating in 2023, and contributed to a rise in wild bird deaths statewide in 2024. The DNR asks people not to handle sick wildlife or try to care for it themselves, and to report it when five or more dead wild birds are found together.
Late winter brings the swans' most animated behavior. The Star Tribune describes pairs swimming side by side, touching chests and lifting their wings as the mating season builds. The winter flocks break up in March and April when the ice melts and the pairs head off to the ponds, lakes and rivers where they'll nest.
At The DesMarais Team, we follow Monticello through every season, including the ones when the river does most of the talking. If you'd like a local read on what's changing in town this winter, or you're thinking about your own plans for the year ahead, request a valuation and consultation and we'll start with a conversation.
