by Gary Lee
We were able to duck a few thunderstorms that rolled through here during the week while loon banding at night.
It rained a few times as we were traveling between lakes but we never got wet while out on any of them.
I was sleeping in the boat as we were coming down Cranberry Lake at daylight on Sunday.
I was wearing my rain gear and someone told me it had rained some on the way back to the vehicles. My gear was wet so I guess it did.
Our catch rate for loons this season was not good. Weather was a factor on some nights.
For two out of six it was solid fog so the only way to get around was by GPS and hugging the shoreline.
When you do that there is a chance of bumping logs and stumps, which we did a few times.
A few times it was rock ledge or rock shoals which stop your progress very quickly.
When you’re looking ahead for a loon you’re not looking down for obstacles.
Some stop you very suddenly but no one was thrown overboard. Luckily we are traveling quite slowly.
We started in the Old Forge area doing Little Moose Lake and Gray Lake.
It was very windy that night which we called about two in the morning as we looked at the radar and thunderstorms were about to hit.
We caught one adult male and two large chicks on a very rough Little Moose Lake.
The birds at Gray Lake played keep away by splash diving every time the light passed over them so they escaped capture.
The second night we started at Sixth Lake. Both of the adults had been banded and were wearing GEO locaters which have been tracking there movements for two years.
It will be another year as they didn’t want anything to do with our lights either and their chick was just as smart.
From there we went to Limekiln Lake where there was only the unbanded female with the three-week-old chick.
She gave me a good shot at her but I only got part of her in the net and she was gone. We had the chick in the boat and put it back in the water to keep them together.
That only took about five minutes but they knew the trick and both dived and avoided capture.
We then went to Big Moose Lake and the loons were calling before we had the boats in the water.
The adults had warned the chicks to hide somewhere as we never did see them.
We were after the banded female for a few dives and she gave me a shot with my net and the loon won again.
Both these loons called many times but never got close enough to catch. We saw the sunrise there for the third year in a row.
The third night we traveled to North Lake where there were two pairs with chicks… one with two and one with one.
The pair right by the landing never said anything so we passed them by and went up the lake.
The other capture boat bumped into the pair with two chicks first and captured the female and one chick. They put the other chick on board.
I had a shot at the male but he wing-rowed right through the net and turned the handle in my hands to escape, never to be seen again.
I took some time to process all three birds.
This was the night of the big meteor shower and that was great.
You could see one and point it out for everyone one to see as they went great distances across the sky.
We checked while going back to the put in but didn’t find the other pair. We traveled to South Lake and that was solid fog from one end to the other.
Our spotlight in the fog confuses the loons and they don’t hold for the light very well. We never saw a bird from our boat.
The other capture boat had a shot at a banded male in the last territory, but it escaped capture also.
So we only had six birds for three nights with three nights to go.
I had a day off so I went splake fishing out on Limekiln Lake with David Koester and his son Zack. They came at six and we fished until about noon.
We only boated four nice splake and had a couple other bites, but Mother Nature and the loons put on quite a show that morning.
About an hour after sunrise there was some light rain falling west of us making a perfect rainbow right over the lake.
At one time there were four loons in the air tremoloing overhead.
They came back down with some doing belly whoppers not far from the boat.
More loon banding further north… but that’s another story. See ya.