We have found that life's busy pace has started
to affect our guest's vacations. No longer can families go "up to
the lake" for a relaxing 1 or 2 week vacation. More and more
families and couples are looking for a long weekend or a short
mid-week get-away. Now at Bear Paw we can work with your schedule
with full week or short stays.
2009 Loons
April 13th first Loon made it to the open
inlet north end of the Lake. April 18th the
Lake is opening more and counted 17 Loons. April 20th
a great day! For sure our pair is back and swimming around the
nesting area looking for their nest. The wind shifted more ice
to our shoreline and the Loons had to head back to the open
inlet. We are hoping the ice will be off by Friday so we can put
the nest in; they are ready! Stay tuned for more updates.
April 23rd Ice is off. April 24th Put the
nest in and the Loons claimed it within 15 minutes; yeah!
May 3rd We have one egg! May 5th We have 2
eggs and she is incubating them now; babies should hatch around
May 30th+. May 29th 2:30 pm first baby arrives and we had
some rough weather so the baby stayed on the nest. May 30th
7:55 am the 2nd baby hatched. I was so excited to be able to
be here for all of this excitement and to capture photos of both
babies on the nest with Mama which is unusual. I also was
blessed to be able to capture each baby leaving the nest as the
Parents cooed them down one by one. It was truly awesome!
June 10th I saw that the south end nest has one baby as of
today. June 13th I got to see the north end family with 2
babies which they must have been born around June 10th as well
due to their size. It is amazing that we have 5 babies on our
lake at once. "Our" babies are doing great and getting so big.
They are practicing diving now and flapping their wings up out
of the water trying to show the gracious display of their
parents.
October
2009 Our baby Loons
stayed healthy throughout the season. All 5 babies were still
seen a few weeks ago in early October. One of the North end
babies got hooked in the chest by a "bucktail" looking lure and
with the help of DNR we attempted to catch the baby to free it
of the hook which also had about 8 feet of line trailing behind.
After an exhausting unsuccessful attempt for an hour to catch
this amazingly strong clever bird we could only hope and pray
that this lure would fester out. Well in late September I
captured some photos of the imbedded lure still there to our
surprise. We aren't sure if this baby has been able to take
flight off of the lake or not due to it's injury but appears
very healthy and strong otherwise. The parents have been gone
now since 2nd week of October and it is now very quiet. We
spotted a baby yesterday right out front of the resort and we
aren't sure which baby it is but it isn't the one with the lure;
that is for sure. Here are a few late season photos of the
babies. "Ok I am sure many of you ask how we know who is
who"? Well Mama is little smaller than Papa and Papa has a much
more broad head. The 1st born baby has always had a darker head
than 2nd born and 1st born is slightly smaller and has been
little independent and somewhat a loner since early August. 2nd
born has always been very attached to the parents and was so
hard to listen to it whine and cry when the parents were
preparing to leave for south migration. 2nd born was very vocal
compared to 1st born.
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