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Awesome Arctic Animals
Answer:
Tundra Swan
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Qugjuk
means tundra swan in Inuktitut.
Tundra
swans, like many other birds, summer in the Arctic. Unlike most though, they
arrive before the snow melts, usually in late May. Once things finally do
warm up in June and July, they lay and incubate their eggs, usually in a nest
made of vegetation on an island in the middle of a pond or a small lake. As
the short summer turns into fall, the swans molt their all-white feathers
and fatten up, feeding on shallow-growing aquatic plants. Then, when the waters
begin to freeze in late September or early October, they gather in flocks
of 20 to 80 birds and fly south, just like Canada and snow geese, in a V,
wintering along the Atlantic coast between Maryland and North Carolina.
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