Mad About Loons

This morning I visited Silverwood Park in St. Anthony (just south of Interstate 694 and New Brighton). A few of my photo club friends went there yesterday morning but I had a schedule conflict. So this morning I visited the park for the first time with my camera.

It was beautiful and along with Canada Geese, ducks, and a bald eagle, there was a loon that was quite close to the shore and not at all shy. I was in heaven because I’m…

Mad about Loons.

I love these beautiful shy birds. Their calls and songs are haunting. And they are rare enough for it to be a real treat when I get close enough to see them well. This loon was all by itself. It was catching a lot of little crawdad like critters and eating them one after another.

Gone Fishing

There are loons that breed on lakes in the Minneapolis area, but they are much more commonly found in Northern Minnesota. One of the sounds that both haunts and delights me when I go up north is the sound of loons singing at night.

Many many years ago I went to a retreat on Lake Vermilion where I spent my first two of nights of the retreat sleeping on an air mattress in a screened in gazebo overlooking the lake. At night the loon songs went on and on and sent chills up my spine. Just as I was dozing off their songs would begin. And then, in the early morning hours the loons would sing some more. This was my first trip to northern Minnesota and I think I fell in love with the loons first and then everything else about this magical place.

The Loon

Not quite four a.m., when the rapture of being alive

strikes me from sleep, and I rise

from the comfortable bed and go

to another room, where my books are lined up

in their neat and colorful rows. How

magical they are! I choose one

and open it. Soon

I have wandered in over the waves of the words

to the temple of thought.

                 And then I hear

outside, over the actual waves, the small,

perfect voice of the loon. He is also awake,

and with his heavy head uplifted he calls out

to the fading moon, to the pink flush

swelling in the east that, soon,

will become the long, reasonable day.

                       Inside the house

it is still dark, except for the pool of lamplight

in which I am sitting.

                 I do not close the book.

Neither, for a long while, do I read on.

  — Mary Oliver

Are you also mad about loons? Why?

Here are my favorite loon photos from today.

May you walk in beauty.

Look at that splash

Big Mouthful