(*Photo of the Month)
Among the varied
beauties of the Northwoods, including the amazing array of its flora and its
fauna, and the multiplicity of its landforms, there is nothing that seems to draw
out more enthusiasm by the locals than loon watching. People here are
passionate about ‘their’ loons, and, here on Beatons Lake in the western U.P.,
Gail and I often find ourselves fervent participants in that passion.
To be sure, we count
ourselves uniquely blessed that our lake association has chosen to place one of
its two nest platforms in our bay, which graces us with perpetual loon activity
early in the season, and then more frequent than normal activity after the
typical late June or early July hatch. It is a rare year when at least one
chick, if not two, isn’t successfully fledged here before our very eyes. (For an earlier blog entry in which I write more extensively about loons, click here; this entry will concentrate on some
other things.)
I’ve been keeping track
of our lake’s loon success for twenty years now, and we’ve had far greater
fledging success since the platforms were placed than prior. What’s a nest
platform? In a completely natural setting, a loon will nest onshore in as safe
a place it can find; but the eggs in onshore nests are subject to radical
predation by raccoons, snakes, skunks and weasels if the parent can be driven
off, and the birds themselves are preyed upon by wolves, bears, coyotes and bobcats.
A nest platform floats offshore, allowing much greater likelihood that eggs
will be successfully hatched. There are still dangers to chicks after hatching
both from above and below the water’s surface (mainly eagles and snapping
turtles), but fledging success is vastly benefited by offshore nesting.
Consider: in the five years I know of before the first platform was placed here
in our bay, we had two successful fledgings in five seasons on our lake
(average -- .4/year). In the six years that the first platform nest was placed
here in our bay, eight chicks were fledged (average – 1.33/year, more than
triple the success). And in the nine years that we’ve had the two platforms
operative, twenty chicks have fledged (average – 2.22/year, nearly six times
the success), including one season (2007) where the two nests produced three
fledged loons, and two seasons (2010 and 2013) where they produced four! Nine
of these twenty came from our platform and eight from the other, with three
chicks successfully hatched and fledged that were born onshore (2009, somewhere
on the lake, and 2014 here in our bay); in both of these onshore hatchings, the
parents had been driven off after laying their first clutch.
"Consider the birds,"
Jesus said...
This year, it looks like
there will be only two fledged between the two nests, so it won’t meet our nine-year
average. Black flies drove both nesting pairs off both nests in late May or
early June, but the pairs persisted and each laid a second clutch successfully.
I am told that if a first clutch of eggs is two, and the bird must abandon
them, the second clutch can only be one; the obverse holds as well – if the
first clutch is one and the parents are driven off, the second clutch may be
two. On our nest, one egg was first laid, the pair driven off, and then two
eggs were laid on the second attempt; only one of these hatched successfully,
though. (Our lake’s ‘Loon Ranger’ actually recovered the partially hatched egg
after the nesting pair had left the nest for the season, displaying it at our
association meeting in August.) The remaining juvenile seems healthy after these
two months. On our lake’s other nest island, one egg was first laid and the
nest abandoned, then two eggs laid on the second attempt, with two chicks
successfully hatched, but within days one went missing to predation; the
remaining juvenile also seems healthy and ready for the cold to begin. Both
will have to be off the lake by freeze up in late November or December, the
parents long gone before that. While it’s on my mind, a quick shout out of
thanks to our Loon Ranger, B, for all her good work!
Finally, about the
photos... Gail and I can get some pretty cool shots right from the comfort of
one of our dock chairs. They come in awfully close when they make their fishing
circuit around the bay, and it’s a more rare but very real treat to see them
swimming like torpedoes under the dock, turning, as they say, on a dime, as
they change directions in pursuit of a meal. If they’re floating or fishing
more lazily in the middle of the bay, we can sometimes even call them in by
standing on the end of the dock and jiggling our hands at arm’s length. They’re
actually curious creatures and will check out a curiosity; of course, it
probably also gives our neighbors something to talk about when they see us
performing so. The photos here include close-ups of a lovely mature bird and of
a three-month old juvenile with indistinct markings, a curious one near the
dock, a parent with a chick pair in sun’s shimmer, a pass-by while floating in
the canoe, and our whirligig imposter. (No, it hasn't snowed up here yet this year, though we did
have our first frost warnings last night...)
“Consider the birds,” Jesus said (Matthew 6:26).
~~ RGM, September 11, 2015
