Our neighbors, Lenny and Eileen, experienced one of those special Wild Kingdom moments this morning. Lenny -- a serious yard guy -- was mowing a strip of lawn along the road directly across from his lake home when he noticed some flapping and flopping in the flooded, reed-filled ditch. Possibly an injured bird, he thought? No, it was a young loon (who, of course, are not well-designed for walking) attempting to struggle out of the ditch with intentions of crossing the road. This raises that age-old question: Why did the loon cross the road? In this case, apparently to leave the smaller body of water where it had hatched (Unnamed Lake 56-305), to enter a different and much larger body of water (Silver Lake).
Lenny ran back to the house, called his wife, and together they scooped up the uncomplaining bird in a blanket and transported it about another 50 yards to the lake. According to them, the bird gave one short hoot, and nonchalantly swam away. This young bird was clearly one of the two loon chicks who were first observed and recorded on June 16. We had heard ?our? local loons calling repeatedly the last couple of days, so this must have been communication/encouragement for this youngster. We estimated the young loon pulled/flopped/struggled for at least a quarter of a mile from the now water-lily-choked environmental lake of its birth through a marshy area now completely filled with 8-10 foot-high cattails. Another neighbor had a similar experience just down the road about ten years ago, when she and her father helped a pair of loon chicks cross the same road. Anyone seen a Loon Xing sign? Apparently we need one for South Silver Lake Road. Lenny and Eileen told us they would be out of town this weekend, and we have been named designated watchers in case the second young loon puts in an appearance. Dan & Sandy Thimgan -- Thimgans Battle Lake MN Otter Tail County -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080814/c90e07e8/attachment.html
