Momma Loon Teaching Baby Loon

It didn't rain throughout the night and we were able to leave just the screen door up without getting wet. I love waking up to a view of the trees and the lake.

It was a pretty grey and overcast morning but the sun would shine through the clouds every once in awhile and it wasn't raining so all was good. 

At about 9 a.m. the sun came out fully and the clouds disappeared. We were packed up and on the trail by 11 am.  This section of the trail was pretty much all woods. You couldn't see the lake for most of it like you can on the other sections of the trail. The trails were rougher and you can tell that not as many people go through this part of the trail as they do the other parts of the trail.

The bugs were so bad on this part of the trail! Probably the worst place for them for the entire hike was this section. It made me remember why I prefer to go backpacking in August and September. Heather stopped to put on bug spray right away. I should have too but I was stubborn and I figured it wouldn't be long before they would go away. I hate putting chemicals such and bug spray on me. 
However, after a few more minutes, I finally had to give in and put some on. Once I did that, it really helped. I was finally able to enjoy the hike. 

The path eventually led to an open area of marsh. 

At one point we were walking through some long marsh grass. I said to Heather, "All this marsh and we don't even see a turtle or a heron to make it worth while." 

And literally seconds after I said that, a blue heron flew by over our heads!

It was pretty rough going at times. If it wasn't for the blue trail markers, there were some places where you wouldn't even know the trail was there. The underbrush was very thick. 

We were happy to see the White-faced Meadowhawk dragonflies because we knew they were taking care of the mosquito situation. 
We stopped for a break when we were tired. Little did we know that, just like on the Pukaskwa trail, we were only about 500 yards away from our campsite. 

It had only taken us about 2 hours to go from site 529 to site 530. We got there much faster than we expected. This was probably because we were walking so fast to avoid the bugs. 

It's a pretty nice site, but there was very little shade to be found; especially by the picnic table. 

And over by the fire pit wasn't much better either. 

So, instead of setting up the tent right away, we both rested for awhile. I took out my sleeping bag and put it in the shade and took a nap for about a half an hour. 

Meanwhile, Heather went and sat with her feet in the water. 

​She told me later how some little fish came up and hung around at her feet. They would bump into her and gently nibble at her feet to check her out and to see if she might be food. They were mostly sunfish and minnows.

There were a lot of large tadpoles in the lake too. 

At one point, two hikers came up to our site. The minute they saw us they turned around and went back to the trail without saying anything to us. I felt bad because I am sure that they had wanted to stop and stay for awhile on our site. I knew that it would be at least 2 hours before they would get to the next campsite and find a decent place to rest,

Out in the middle of the lake we noticed a baby loon and it's mother. Momma was teaching baby how to fish. 

Baby doesn't really know how to dive yet. He sticks his head in the water but doesn't go right under. Momma would dive and swim a little ways away and then pop up again. Baby would see her and then swim towards her and follow her around the lake. 

I noticed that any time momma got too far away, the baby would start to make faint whistling sounds. Every once in awhile momma would head back to baby and snuggle up with him for a bit to reassure him that she was still there. But one time, I watched with interest when baby couldn't find momma after she made a dive. She popped up behind him but he didn't notice. So he swam around practically the whole lake calling and looking for her. It's a pretty small lake so he didn't travel all that far. Instead of going to reassure him, she just followed behind him, keeping an eye on him. Finally he made a U-turn and noticed that she was right there. I guess that is part of her training him to become comfortable being on his own. 

We set up the tent facing an area of the lake where we thought we might have a chance to see moose in the morning or in the evening of we were really lucky. But we never did see any moose. 

We did a lot of sitting and relaxing on this day. Heather spent time down with the fish and I went exploring in the rockier area at the other end of the site. 

It was a nice place to just sit quietly and wait for things to come to me, like this Slaty Skimmer dragonfly.

And this female, Common Yellowthroat Warbler.

I also saw another Blue Heron fly by. As I walked back towards Heather a garter snake crossed my path. It quickly made a dash for the underbrush in an effort to hide which made it tricky to get any sort of picture of it. 

Just before we were about to have supper, Momma loon made some very loud calls and then she flew away and left the baby loon all alone. Baby stayed out in the middle of the lake, quietly, by himself. He only called for Momma about 3 times and he seemed to be just fishing and waiting . After about an hour Momma flew by over head. We thought she was going to land, but she didn't. She just kept on going. 

Heather and I had supper around 6 p.m. We had re-hydrated Sloppy Joes. They were good but they gave me heart burn. As we ate supper we could hear a chorus of  frogs starting to croak to one another across the whole lake. It was not the usual low "ribbit" sound, nor did it sound like Spring Peepers. It was more of a higher "pip pip" sound. 

About an hour after supper, Momma loon finally came back. She had been gone for about 3 hours by that point. I am assuming that she was probably visiting Poppa loon on one of the other lakes we had seen him on, or she may have been fishing in a lake that had bigger fish. This lake might not have enough food for her since the lake is so small. Or maybe she just needed to stretch her wings. I don't really know for sure.

​She called loudly and came splashing into the lake like a float plane coming in for a landing. When the baby loon got close to her, he made an adorable whistling sound. Almost like a "coo". 

Now that Momma was back she had a new lesson for baby to learn. She began to teach him how to taxi across the water. He couldn't fly yet, so he couldn't lift off. Momma would propel herself across the lake, flapping her wings hard as though she were going to take off, but then she would stop. She waited and watched while the baby loon mimicked what Momma had just done. However, he was not nearly as proficient at it as she was. He flapped his wings as fast as he could and propelled himself across the water, but it was ungraceful and very awkward looking. But he was trying, and I am sure that it will only be a few more days before he gets it right. He was already diving better than he was earlier in the day. "Practice makes perfect", as they say. 

As we were looking for a place to hang our food in the tree, Heather discovered the bones of an animal. Looks like it may have been something form the weasel family. Not sure what happened to it. My first thought was that maybe an owl got it. But Heather thought that maybe this weasel got too close to the loon's  babies and the loon attacked and killed it. Could be why the loon has only one baby instead of a full brood. But then loons only lay 1 to 3 eggs. So who knows really. 

For the rest of the evening we played Quirkle at the picnic table.

From there we could see the sunset across the lake. 

We played until it got to dark to play anymore. 

Then we packed it up and moved into the tent and played Quirkle some more in there. 
We went to sleep at about 10 p.m. to the sounds of crickets, frogs, the occasional loon call, and even the hooting of an owl once or twice.