Loon with baby in morning fog

As you are already well aware (thanks to previous posts on this blog), I've been monitoring and photographing a Loon family for the past few weeks. On Friday, July 1st I discovered a Loon nest completely by accident on a local lake here in Grand Portage. I was with my friend Roger and we were looking for turtles sunning on logs, which is a frequent sight on the same lake. No turtles on that day, but while walking a small part of the shoreline we soon spotted a Loon nest out in the tall grass across a narrow channel of water in a protected corner of the lake. Right then and there we made plans to come back the next day and watch the nest all day in hopes that the chicks would hatch while we were there.

We returned at 9:00 AM the next morning and saw the adult was still sitting on the eggs. This was the beginning of what would end up being almost a two-week stretch of daily checks of the nest. After a week of visiting the nest and still not seeing any babies, I was starting to get a little worried about the eggs and whether or not they would hatch, since most Loon babies are born before mid-July. Finally, when I visited the nest on the morning of July 14th, I noticed right away that one of the babies had been born and was hiding behind the adult on the nest. I watched the nest for part of that day and eventually got some shots of the baby in front of the adult on the nest.

When I returned the next day the other baby had been born and the Loon family was already off the nest and out in the middle of the lake. This was when things got really interesting! Since the 14th I haven't quite been making daily trips to the lake, but almost. Watching the adults interact with their chicks out on the lake has been the most interesting wildlife experience I think I've ever had. It is amazing the care that is given to the chicks by the adults. Most of the time during their first week of life the chicks ride on the backs of the parents. This is done mostly for protection from predators, but also because the chicks get tired easily and need to rest. Now that the chicks are already almost two weeks old they are diving on their own (although their dives only last for a few seconds), they are learning to preen themselves, and soon they will be catching their own food, which consists mostly of minnows (small fish).

These photos were captured this morning just after sunrise, which so far has been the day with the most incredible conditions for photographing the birds during all my days of visiting the lake. We have been having daytime temperatures of almost 90 degrees with very high humidity, but the night of the 18th and early morning of the 19th the temp dropped into the upper 50's which meant that in the morning there was a lot of fog on the lake. The conditions for picture taking were phenomenal to say the least. I hope you enjoy these images from this morning!