What you looking at? by Watermark Photography
Jeff Simonis has been sharing some absolutely stunning photos & video of a family of loons from a lake near Traverse City lately! Here are a few, but you definitely want to check out more including this video of this little loon being fed breakfast! Follow Watermark Photography on Facebook for his latest and view & purchase his work on his website.
More loons on Michigan in Pictures.
Return of the Loons by Dani Fegan
The Seney National Wildlife Refuge shared a report by Damon McCormick of Common Coast Research & Conservation that provides a passionate look at the World’s Oldest Loons battling over breeding territory:
On Saturday morning, April 25, a female loon on I Pool beheld a relatively frequent spring sight: two males battling, with beating wings and stabbings bills, for control of the breeding territory. The observer was Fe, who was first color-marked as an E Pool mother in 1990, and who will thus turn at least 40 this summer. The hostilities were brutal but brief, and after only a minute one of the combatants discerned that this was not his day, after which he shortly took flight for less perilous waters. With the challenger vanquished, Fe and the unbanded victor, who was likely but not certainly her mate from 2025, initiated a circling round of bill dipping and jerk diving, aspects of courtship involved in forming, or re-forming, a pair bond for the season.
Concurrently on nearby H Pool, Fe’s former partner of 25 years, ABJ, was engaged in scouting for potential nest sites with his current companion, Aye-Aye, with whom he bred unsuccessfully on H last year. Although ABJ, who will turn 39 this June, hatched a record 32 chicks with Fe, since their split in April 2022 he has failed to produce further offspring, and she remains the only mate with whom he has ever sired young. Along with the broader Seney loon population, which includes color-marked adults who are embarking upon their 24th, 27th and 33rd Refuge seasons, ABJ and Fe and their respective partners will spend the next few weeks engaged in territorial defense, habitat assessment, copulation and nest building ahead of 27-29 days of egg incubation that, with luck, will culminate in the emergence of one or two downy fluffballs in early-mid June.
You can follow along with the saga of the oldest known loons with highlights like “The World’s Oldest Loon Divorcees” on the Seney Wildlife Refuge Facebook.
Common Loon, photo by Ron DeHaan
So I sez to this loon, I’m seeing more & more loons every year…
At least I imagine something to that effect in the conversation above. I’ve definitely been noticing more loons again this summer. While loons are far from out of the woods, this is a real success story for conservation efforts that you can read about from the Michigan Loon Preservation Association.
The Michigan Nature Guy (Donald Drife) wrote about the rebound of Michigan’s loon population, saying in part:
No other bird signifies the wilds of northern Michigan better than the Common Loon (Gavia immer). When I wake up while camping along the shore of a northern lake and feel its eerie cry, I am connected to a primitive time and the primitive land.
…Common Loons breed in Michigan north of Saginaw. Our current population is 500-775 nesting pairs. While this is up from the estimated 220 pairs in the early 1980s, there are still thousands of suitable lakes without a nesting pair. Loons are diving birds with their legs placed toward their tails. This gives them trouble walking on land. It is rare to see a loon on land except at its nest. Loons return in early spring and it is not uncommon to see them on a lake the day after its ice melts. How they know that the water is open remains a mystery. Nests are built near the waterline and often touch the water. Nests are little more than bare ground when the eggs are laid. Both parents incubate the eggs and add grass, sedges, reeds, and other vegetation to the nest.
View the photo from kayaking in Lake Dubonnet near Interlochen bigger, see more in Ron’s slideshow, and follow Ron DeHaan Photography on Facebook.
Loon and friends at Brown Bridge Pond, photo by SBodjack.
Apparently sometimes we all can just get along. Hope your weekend is filled with fun and friends.
Check this out background big and see this and many more in her Brown Bridge Pond slideshow or see where she took it on her map.
The pond is in the 1300-acre Brown Bridge Quiet Area just south of Traverse City. They say that five known species of endangered, threatened, or special concern status have been documented at the Brown Bridge Quiet Area: bald eagles, osprey, red-shouldered hawks, common loons, and wood turtles.
