American Loons
The much loved American Loon, famous for it’s haunting call echoing across the lakes and ponds during dusk and twilight hours is not always an easy creature to photograph. Though they like fishing in shallow waters, the tend to shy away from human visitors.
I Recently, I spent three early mornings on the shores of Canaan Street Lake in Canaan, New Hampshire. The first morning the loons were out, but far off shore, The second morning, they were no where to be found. The final morning was cool and foggy. I spent several minutes using binoculars to locate the loons and was ready to sit back and drink my coffee when a female and her chick popped up close to shore. Shortly there after I heard that haunting call out in the middle of the lake and spotted the male loon flying in just below the fog layer.
As the morning progressed they started fishing closer to the shoreline offering me a wonderful opportunity to capture images of these magnificent water birds as they go about feeding their chick.
Mom and her chick
The caring look of a parent and chick doesn't tell the whole story. Mom had come up with a small perch to feed the check who was swimming to her for its breakfast. When mom repositioned the perch in her beak to better feed the chick, she lost the breakfast morsel and had to start the process all over again. This image is from an MP4 sequence I have on my website showing the entire fail. the images
Feeding the Chick
All morning long I attempted to capture the adult loons feeding the chick. And each time the chick face was away from me.
Breakfast Delivery
Small perch is on the menu for the youngster’s breakfast
The Morning’s Environment
Feeding Fail Sequence
Everyone makes mistakes and loons are no exception. In this series of images, you see mama loon with a small perch in her beak, swimming towards her chick that is swimming toward her, presumably grateful for breakfast. As mama loon gets closer, she dips her head in the water to reposition the perch to better feed her offspring. When she raises her head back out of the water you notice the perch is missing. Then you see her tilt her head to look down for the fish and in subsequent images, you see her look at the youngster who has now lowered it’s head is disappointment.
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Overnight the temperatures dropped down into the lower 50”s (F) resulting in a very foggy morning. Though my goal was to photograph loons, my first task was to capture this panorama of the sun starting to burn off the morning fog on Canaan Street Lake.
Breakfast is Over
The female loon and her offspring float away in the early morning sun. They had been in fairly close to shore catching their meal for close to forty minutes and now headed out to deeper waters to join the male loon.
Classic Loon Image
When you think of loons, or hear their haunting call, an image similar to this is more than likely what your mind’s eye sees. This is another early morning image taken as the sun was burning through the fog.