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Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Another nine tenths of an inch of rain yesterday and last night. The loons made a herculean effort of nest building and managed to keep the bowl above water. Water level rise is one of the most common causes of loon nest failure because a swamped nest is a failed nest.
With that, the black flies, and a 60 hour gap between laying the two eggs, these loons are off to a shaky start. Incubation was a very sporadic episode of short periods on the nest with hours-long periods between. On top of all that, we seem to have lost track of one of the eggs during the hectic nest building yesterday. Is it buried in all the vegetative matter hurled at the nest? Was it knocked out of the nest? Or will we see it when we have a better look inside the bowl?
Eggs being accidentally knocked out of a nest are well documented. In fact, in 2015 we retrieved an egg from the water beside the nest of this pair when we went to collect the eggshell fragments after a successful hatch of one chick. On the other hand, an egg being accidentally buried in a nest would be so rare that it isn’t on our list of nest failure causes. Still, the loons are always surprising us and the behavior of the loons yesterday certainly backs up the interpretation of an egg being buried under the nest material. That’s the great thing about the Loon Cam. We are seeing and learning so much more about nesting loons than we can from just occasional visits with binoculars. If the lost egg doesn’t turn up sooner, we’ll definitely be digging into this nest when the loons are done with it.
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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.

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Look what we have!

The camera has been moved and, low and behold, there’s an egg in the nest! It was likely laid late yesterday or last night. With a little luck we’ll have two eggs by tomorrow.

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