Great Northern Loon in nesting raft on Benedict Lake MN

[TLS Guy]

After this seemingly eternal winter the ice finally went out of Benedict Lake May 13.

Benedict Lake May 10.

We put in the docks and lifts two days later May 15. The last of the winter snow piles finally melted that day.

The Mantrap Lake design Loon nesting raft I built four years ago was also deployed at that time.

Over the last Memorial weekend the nesting pair at our SW end of the lake were in and out of the raft. The female must have laid eggs sometime Tuesday May 28 as that day they took up permanent residence on the raft, sharing nesting duties.

The Loon is the Minnesota State Bird and from an audio standpoint really defines the Minnesota Lake country.

On that Wikipedia site there are audio clips of a couple of Loon calls.

I first deployed the raft four years ago. The Loons nested on the raft for the first time last year and two chicks which survived were hatched on it.

This raft design has been developed by the Mantrap Lake Association. These rafts were built as a class project at the St. Cloud Technical college.

The Mantrap raft I have deployed on Benedict is the only raft built out of the Mantrap Lake association.

 

[Alex2507]

Yesterday I got to watch Eddie of the Deck hand feed a mated pair of Canadian Geese (I think) and their 6 chicks on the pond the deck overhangs while I ate a delicious Italian grinder.



In this next pic you can see the little bench that I pulled up to the edge for my bird's eye view (haha).



Those are old pic's but this year's chicks are now full size geese just about ready for flight. For the first time the pond is home to more geese. Prior to this year that mated pair would chase off any interlopers. Now their are 4 other chickless mated pair swimming around but it is obviously not their turf. After the 'family' is good and stuffed and swimming away to the other side of the pond the 4 adult pairs start swimming in to scavenge the corn that left over. One female put it into high gear arriving at the corn first and ate hurriedly while one of the parents sped in to kick her ***. It was really quite a show.

Corn and bread might not be good for geese but Eddie is only in it for entertainment value. If he could he would feed them hot dogs.

 

[TLS Guy]

Nice pictures Alex.

We have a family with two chicks on the lake Benedict this year. For some reason Geese help protect Loon's nesting area. Geese do not eat fish and loons only eat fish, diving up to 200 feet for their food. They are fast under water, and I have timed a loon staying under water for almost 10 minutes. Loons are highly territorial. They fight with each other and especially Grebes over territory fiercely.

We had a huge flock of Geese on Benedict until last year. This large flock was grazing in a hay field at a large residence, not on the lake, a mile from us. I would not have believed this if I had not been told by a reliable witness, but a wolf pack came out of the woods and got the whole large flock in an instant.

So it is good to to have another pair of geese start again.

12% of Goose couples are homosexual by the way. Apparently it is not unknown for straight Geese to give an egg to a homosexual couple.

I guess they beet us to same sex marriage.

We had two very vigorous Loon chicks hatch on the raft on Monday. I have a picture and will try and take more today. Since Tuesday it has been very windy which is hard on the chicks, and so they have largely been sheltering in the reed banks. It is hard to spot them on a rough lake as there coloring makes them blend with the waves, and they also spend a lot of time underwater. Today should be pretty calm so we will search for the family out in the boat with the grandchildren today.

The loons were 27 days on their eggs, which is in the 27 to 30 day range.

We had another two chicks off a wooden platform raft put in a reed bank by another home owner on the NE end of the lake. One pair never nested that I could tell, and another pair had a natural nest flooded almost right away, due to a fast rising lake.

I will post more pictures here soon.

 

[GO-NAD!]

Mantrap? That ain't no mantrap. Now Adam, he has a mantrap.