We pretty much visit the outflow of Marcil Lake every night. Its hard to resist checking the progress of the Pacific Loons and Red-throated Loons that are nesting there, in easy view of the road.
The night before last saw the two Red-throated Loon nests that we know about come to fruition. There is at least one other pair of Red-throated Loons nesting there, but I've never located the nest, and I suspect at least one more.
Wednesday night, as we drove in, the first thing I noticed was there were two birds at the farthest nest, a Red-throated's. I thought, perhaps, that we just caught the changing of the guard and that the second bird was taking a turn at incubating the eggs. When I turned to look at the other Red-throated's nest I couldn't locate the bird.
The Pacific Loons nest in a pond right near the road, and she was right there sitting on the nest. But again I couldn't find the one Red-throated at her nest. Leah's sister then pointed her out sitting farther down the shore. "That's unusual." I said to myself. I could see the male carrying, what I thought to be, nesting material so I thought that perhaps they had lost their nest and were making a new start (albeit a late one).
That's when I realized that the male wasn't carrying weeds, but a rather large fish. And then we noticed first one chick and then a second. The male fed one chick and then settled back on the pond. (I'll apologize right off the bat for the quality of these photos, near midnight on an overcast day, they were shot at a high ISO and hand held at low shutter speeds. These first two shots are heavily cropped also.)
Checking the other nest in the distance we could see there was one chick swimming with an adult. This loon built on the same site as last year, a small island in the middle of the river. After building the nest this spring it was flooded out in the high water, but re-established as soon as the land was exposed again. I'm assuming they lost the first egg.
We went off looking for Char fry in the stream and then returned for more photos. I moved closer, and laid down behind the old iglutak front, while Leah and the kids picked Mountain Sorrel. These are the best photos of the lot, unfortunately.
Note the one chick on the adult's back, the other tucked under its wing.
And loons weren't the only baby birds around. Two Pectoral Sandpiper chicks along with their anxious parents moved about ahead of me as I walked out. Constantly on the move they were even more challenging to photograph in the low light.
The adults were only slightly more cooperative.
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