Critters on Lost Loon

Lost Loon Island

Grackle

 For an island of less than an acre in size, Lost Loon has quite a variety of wildlife and the birds were the first to command my attention. Within seconds of our arrival the grackles were commenting. John called them his management team because they vociferously supervised any activity on the north end of the island. When the chicks were hatching, the adults became aggressive and dive-bombed him regularly. By the time we got there the chicks must have fledged because the grackle community was content to scold us from the tree-tops. I don't know if we have grackles in Alberta but, if we do, they certainly aren't common. Instead we have magpies. There wasn't a magpie to be seen on Lost Loon. While the grackles aren't the prettiest of birds, they did give me a chance to practice with my DSLR camera, zoom lenses and teleconverter. I thought I could hold the camera pretty steady until I put the tele on and zoomed the lens out to its maximum. My technique became find the bird, aim the spot focus in the general direction, press the shutter and hope for the best. It's a very good thing that digital photos are easy to delete.

Song Sparrow

     None of us is an expert birder and one little bird had us puzzled for several days. I thought it sounded like some kind of sparrow but I had difficulty finding it. I was looking up high in the trees. It's call was loud and close but I couldn't seem to find the bird. On about the third day I saw movement in one of the bushes closer to the ground and heard the call. From then on I began to look in the bushes rather than the trees but it was Richard who got a good photo of it. He was also able to record its call. We checked bird books and online resources and identified it as a song sparrow. There were also critters on shore and in the water around the island.

Sandpiper

     I once spotted a river otter. Mergansers and loons hung around off shore, and a bald eagle flew by once with a fish in its claws. No photo of that unfortunately. My favourite bird on the island had a nest somewhere near the shore on the north end. We thought it was a killdeer. It flew low over the water and peeped repeatedly trying to draw attention away from one large rock. I never wanted to investigate where the nest was and, as long as I stayed in one spot, the bird wandered around the rocks or puttered in the shallows. Today I showed the photo to a friend who knows much more about birds than I do and she was sure it wasn't a killdeer. Out came the bird books again. We now think the little bird is a spotted sandpiper.

     One evening when we arrived back at the island by boat, I heard the sandpiper and stood absolutely still. As I watched, one other adult and three chicks scurried around on the rocks and then disappeared behind the big rock. After that I never saw more than one birdat a time.

     I met one of the garter snakes just outside the main cabin. As I stepped from the last step to the ground I noticed a movement to my left in the grass. I stopped and the movement stopped. As I continued to watch, a garter snake moved gracefully from the cover of the grasses and across the path a few feet in front of me. It was visible for a few seconds before disappearing into the foliage below the solar panels. I waited for a while but the snake didn't reappear and I didn't see it again. This snake looked like a pretty healthy one with a very attractive pattern of yellow and green on its back and sides. I'm not sure what it found to eat although I think I may have seen a vole or some other small rodent. There didn't seem to be any mice on the island. We weren't too sad about that.

Mayflies

 Then there were the insects. I'd never encountered May flies before. There were abundant which might have pleased the fish and the spiders but didn't exactly thrill the humans. Since we had a decent cell phone signal I Googled Mayflies, also called fish flies, and learned that Mayfly nymphs spend most of their lives in the water. They emerge from the water into a pre-adult stage and fly to foliage where they moult into sexually mature adults. Their claim to insect fame is that they moult once they have fully functional wings. I gather no other group of insects do that. Mayflies don't have working mouths so they don't eat and live for only a few hours or days at most. The Mayflies bugged me most when when they landed on my glasses. I flicked them out of my hair and when any of us came into the cabin the others did a Mayfly check, plucking the insects off clothing and tossing them out the door. When they landed on my glasses the need to get them off seemed much more urgent. Dead and dying Mayflies were entangled in many a spider web and there seemed to be several different kinds of spiders which showed themselves mainly at dusk.

     I heard and swatted a few mosquitos while on the island but the black flies were much more bothersome. They seemed very fond of my socks which I never understood because I wore shorts and there was an ample expanse of bare leg just beyond the top of the socks. I had a few good lessons in concentration when I tried to focus the camera as several black flies ordered dinner through my socks. The black flies won and I packed up the camera gear and retreated inside behind screens on windows and doors.

     I was not sorry to leave the black flies and the Mayflies behind but, on the morning we left, I made a point of going to say goodbye to the little sandpiper. There it was, only distinguishable from the granite by its movements. I hope when we return to Lost Loon next year the sandpipers and song sparrows will already be in residence. Perhaps next year I'll be able to get some good photos of loons.