Photographs by Frank

I spent about two hours (from 3-5 PM) watching the loons this afternoon. The temperature was about 70 deg. F and it was mostly cloudy. When I arrived at the lake there was a loon sitting on the nest. (S)he was alert and a bit pestered by the black flies.

Periodically the sun would peak out and the bird would open its mouth to “pant”. Avian “panting” is a thermoregulation mechanism. Birds don’t sweat. Thus, when they get hot the open their mouths to evaporate water from their mucus membranes in order to cool off.

After about an hour and a quarter, the loon stood up, examined the nest and settled back down facing in a slightly different direction. His/her movements looked a bit like egg turning, suggesting that at least one egg had been laid. Joan (who had arrived just a few minutes before this), using the spotting scope and a higher vantage point, confirmed that there is at least one egg (and possibly two) in the nest.

Thus the wait begins! The incubation period for loons is 25-30 days.

Roughly five minutes later and without warning, the loon on the nest slipped off the back of the nest into water. Shortly thereafter, the head of a bird appeared in a gap in the vegetation. It climbed up onto the nest, briefly examined the contents and sat down. I was puzzled by this turn of events until I finally noticed the head of a second loon just to the left of the nest. We had witnessed a ‘changing of the guard’! I had been completely unaware that the second loon had arrived at the nest. One of the hazards of peering into a telephoto lens is ‘tunnel vision’!

The loon in the water spent a few minutes moving nesting material towards the nest and then headed out to feed. After watching the sitting loon for a few more minutes, and knowing it could be an hour or more before the next changing of the guard, we packed up and headed home.

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Yesterday afternoon Joan sent me a text message saying that there was a loon sitting on then nest. Her brother George had also seen a loon on the nest earlier in the day.

When Joan’s message arrived, I packed up my gear and headed down to the lake, arriving at the bridge at about 4:30. Joan reported that the bird had slipped off the nest as she put her phone away after sending the text!

Joan headed home. I set up the tripod etc. and settled in to see what would happen anyway.

I spent most of my time watching the main part of the lake hoping to pick up a bird as it came back under the bridge. However, after roughly a half hour wait, I first saw a single loon, on the upstream side of the bridge, over near the Craig Road bridge.

This bird just “hung out’ in the area between the two bridges for about twenty minutes. It was not actively fishing, it did a bit of stretching at one point, but it really just hung around. Eventually, it headed over towards the far ‘shore’ where the nest is, but again, it just meandered about for another ten or fifteen minutes. Finally it headed over to the nest a climbed up.

I watched the bird on the nest for a half hour or so. It was attentive, looking around a lot, and was still on sitting on the nest when I packed up and headed home about 5:45 PM.

Given that the nest was left unoccupied for long intervals yesterday, it is probable that the birds have not yet laid any eggs.

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Stalwart readers will remember that 2020 was a year to be remembered in Gregg Lake loon-dom… we had the first loon chicks hatched and fledged in living memory.

The loons (presumably the same pair as last year) are back again this year!

On the first of April this year (2021), Joan observed a single loon on the lake during an early kayak excursion. A week later (8 April) she observed a pair of loons. About a week ago (on 2 May) we had the first report of nest building behavior and a day or two later we observed this ourselves.

Late yesterday afternoon, I packed up my camera gear into the truck and made the mile drive down to the bridge to see what was up. I spent a couple of hours observing the loons. Or, more precisely I spent about forty five minutes waiting for the loons to make an appearance and a bit more than an hour watching the loons. The weather was cool (upper forties) and there was a bit of a breeze. Thus the black flies were not an issue and I never donned the bug jacket I brought along.

I first spotted the pair swimming together on the main part of the lake. They dove in unison, swam under the bridge and headed for the far ‘shore’ where they nested last year. They spent a short time adding nest material to the site they used last year and one of the birds climbed up to try out the result. The pair then explored two other sites nearby. At one of these sites they began to make another nest and, again, one of the birds climbed up to test things out.

Eventually one of the birds headed back to the main part of the lake. The second individual spent a few more minutes working on the nest before it headed off for the main part of the lake as well.

Twice, while the loons were hanging out near the nascent nest site(s), I observed a behavior that I had not witnessed before. One of the birds appeared to jump out of the water and pounce on something. The water by the nest sites is much too shallow for a loon to dive. Thus, I wonder if it was pouncing in attempt to catch prey, much like a fox or similar animal does when hunting rodents in a grassy field. I captured this behavior in two photos made a fraction of a second apart.

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About five this afternoon Joan’s brother George called to say that he and Michelle had seen a loon on a nest on the north side of the bridge while they were out on a walk.

Of course, I grabbed Big Bertha (my 600 mm lens) , camera and tripod and headed down to the lake as soon as I could. The bird and its nest were easily seen at the waters edge on the far side of the lake.

Five or ten minutes after I arrived the bird on the nest slipped into the water leaving the nest empty. This behavior (i.e. leaving the nest empty) suggests to me that the nest does not (yet, hopefully) contain eggs.

I made a couple of photographs of the empty nest hoping to be able to decide if eggs were present or not. However, the angle of view did not allow a clear view of the interior of the nest.

Joan says that she saw two birds in the water at one point, but I, while concentrating on the camera, only saw one. The individual I saw stayed in the general vicinity of the nest for another five or ten minutes before disappearing. At one point it swam close enough that I could fill the frame with the bird. I watched for another fifteen or twenty minutes before hunger and the black flies drove me back home and did not see either loon again.

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