Wild Wednesday - Camping 102

Duck feeding is a big highlight when you're roughing it in the mountains! The ducks are entertaining and bread is cheap, especially when one saves crusts or borrows stale hot dog buns from the firehall freezer. Eventually the ducks got to recognize me (oh, I know they recognize the sound of the bread bag, indulge me) and got comfortable enough to eat out of my hands. One little guy just sat next to me on the dock and periodically asked for a piece.

In all I saw about 20 adults, 5 babies and 3 teens.

On Tuesday, aftering breaking camp to head home, I decided to hike to Bug Lake. I found out the trail also leads to Bear Mt so next year I will start earlier and make the whole 8 mile hike to the mountain and back.

I was alone at the lake and enjoying the solitude (and my hexies!) when I noticed some birds swimming around on the other side of the lake. You know where my binocs were, right? Yeh, packed in the truck. Luckily the bird is huge and very distinctive so it was easy enough to figure out it was a Common Loon!! As the birds moved around the lake, I soon realized it was 2 adults and 2 teens that the parents were feeding.

These are not the best pictures becasue they are taken at 16X but I think you'll get the idea. I enjoyed the loon calls (they have a very haunting call but I also heard what must have been a call to dinner for the little ones). When people started showing up I started the 2 mile hike back to the campground. I had found a great rock for my gardens that I had to haul on my shoulder for almost the whole trip back but it was worth it! And the comments from passersby told me so :^)



parent feeding fish to child

This is a stuffed loon at the Adk Museum.
Per wikipedia: On average a Great Northern Loon is about 32 inches long,
has a wingspan of 54 inches and weighs about 9 lbs.