Loons from New Hampshire

We went to New Hampshire to visit Mike's brother, John, and his children, Claire and David, before they head off to college. John lives on Lake Waukewan and was nice enough to take us out in his boat in search of common loons that had nested in the area. On Lake Nelson in New Jersey, we have mallards, cormorants and Canada geese that spend the summer, but we only get the fancy waterfowl during migration. Two years ago, we saw one migrating common loon who stopped for a day.

There were a few nesting pairs of common loons on the lake. We found one juvenile with a parent and watched from a distance for a while.  We got to hear the wail sound as one parent called across half  the lake to its mate and the mate swam over.

As an added bonus, Lake Waukewan is very clean and Mike got to dive in, something he occasionally has the urge to do on hot days in Lake Nelson before he considers the algae and bacteria levels.

Common Loon

Yesterday, Amazon delivered a new bird book to us: Birds of New Jersey. Looking through the waterfowl pages, we decided that we hoped to see a loon someday.

This morning, an odd looking, large duck landed on the lake. Chris got the binoculars and what do you know, it was a loon. How lucky is that? Okay, it's a common loon, and our daughter Karen makes fun of us because we think the common merganser and common goldeneye are rare birds. Well, we've never seen a loon before, common or not, so we took a few photos. This is the best, but it's a grey bird on a grey lake and a grey day.