Last week, I had a chance to see the loons that I photographed early in July. The youngsters are growing up fast and growing some basic feathers. They have lost the soft gray look they had just weeks before. Now they are a bit scraggly looking but you can see that they are beginning to resemble their parents in winter plumage. The parents spend hours everyday searching for food for the little ones. They mostly seem to eat crayfish (crawdads) and occasionally a little fish. It takes a lot of little meals to fill these kids’ bellies. The youngsters are learning to dive and swim underwater. Soon they will have to feed themselves and learn to fly. They will migrate to the Columbia or perhaps the ocean and the young ones will return in three years to set up their own territories and hopefully nest, and produce a new generation. And like their parents, the young loons now wear four leg bands – three colored ones and a metal one – so that when they are seen again, they will be recognized. If you ever see a loon with color bands, try to remember the sequence of the colors on each leg. You can report the band information to the USGS banding lab.
My Everyday Photos 