Five trumpeter swans from Iowa appeared to feel comfortable at their new home on a mill pond in the upper Buffalo River valley of Arkansas after they were released Wednesday, an Arkansas Game and Fish Commission biologist said.

"They were preening and feeding and feeling very well at home," said G&FC biologist Karen Rowe.

The release was intended to imprint on the birds a new home to which they will return when they migrate.

The birds - a sibling group of two males and three males - released Wednesday were among 18 sent to Arkansas by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources as part of a program to restore the swans to the habitat range they once enjoyed.

Rowe said the Boxley mill pond where the swans were released was partially frozen, but had open water where the swans were readily able to find food. Boxley, in Newton County west of Jasper, is in the upper reaches of the Buffalo National River.

According to Rowe, the sun was shining and the temperature was about 30 degrees when the birds were turned loose, but the swans are used to temperatures in the neighborhood of 0 degrees in Iowa, so they probably felt quite warm.

The five birds were raised in Iowa by parent swans at a farm in Ida Grove, Rowe said, and trapped by Iowa game officials.

Thirteen more swans are to be released Thursday in the Holla Bend National Wildlife Refuge along the Arkansas River southeast of Dardanelle.

The process intended to make Arkansas party of the swans' migratory pattern is known as reverse migration imprinting. Other agencies participating in the program include the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the Trumpeter Swan Society, and the Gorgas Science Foundation in Brownsville, Texas, which holds a lease on the Boxley Mill property.