Second Egg Laid!
Well, it took them long enough but we have two eggs now. It was laid shortly before noon and the pair is busy building up the nest and incubating. Now we get down to the long, 28 day haul. The black flies are baddish but have certainly been worse.
Our colleague Walter Piper wrote a blog last week about older females not tolerating black flies very well. Very apropos for this pair because the blog gives a hint of how to distinguish between a male and an older female during black fly season, without the aid of bands. Read the blog and see if you can figure out which loon is which by looking at the back of their heads.
The bets are on as to whether the first egg is viable, seeing as how it got next to no incubation for two and a half days. This looks like it might have a similar outcome to the 2017 nest. Will they hatch one egg? Two eggs? We only have to wait four weeks for an answer.