62 degrees F Light Rain Wind 6mph S
Sunrise 6:12 am CDT Sunset 8:11 pm CDT
Well, it has been quite the day. On several levels.
I did a blog post earlier this morning. But the internet ATE it. Who knows where it went!
But if you see it floating in the ether somewhere, would you send it back to me? ;-)
So let me try to reconstruct some of what has happened today.
Just before 7 o'clock this morning, both loons were up on the nest!
But better yet, they mated.
That shows real interest in the nest and that they are taking ownership of it.
As they left the nest and swam away, the male yodeled FIVE times. Just in case anyone had a question, he was saying "This is now MY territory. Stay away."
But also and just as important, we now know who the male is.
He is a male that we banded several years ago. He has green bands on both legs. And he has successfully nested on the lake for the last several years.
This is also the male that I had a very special encounter with last summer. If you want to read about that, you can find it in my blog at http://mnbound.com/larrys-loon-blog/2016/5/19/thursday-may-19-2016-616-am-cdt
So now we know who the male of this pair is.
I could not see the female's legs for sure when she left the nest but I do not think that she had any bands. This fits with what I thought was the case about this pair - that something had happened to the female we banded along with him and that he had a new mate.
So now we will probably have a chance to get to know them much better over the next month.
Then shortly after 8 am the pair of loons was back and swam around the nest but did not get back up on it that I saw.
And then to make this day even more special, the loons were back again, for a third time about 11:30 am. They swam around the nest for about 10 minutes and the male with the green bands got up on the nest for a couple minutes.
But it didn't stop there!
Shortly before 4 pm, they were back again! This made FOUR visits today. There were a couple soft hoots from one of them but as far as I saw, they did not get up on the nest.
And THEN!
According to chat, they were back around the nest shortly before 5 pm. The FIFTH visit of the day! I missed seeing that one.
Can it be that we have more blessings than we know how to deal with?
But it wasn't done yet!
About 5:30 pm, they were back for the SIXTH visit to the nest.
AND the second MATING.
I think it is fairly obvious that they have claimed this nest as home!
Now we will wait for nest building behavior. And hopefully the first egg to be laid!
Does it get any better than this?!
Copyright 2017 Larry R Backlund