My friend Ken Red has wildlife property in Pine County, Minnesota, where there are pheasants, wood cock, sand hill cranes, ruffed grouse and deer.
I am impressed by the difference between my similar spot in southwest Minnesota and his property only 285 miles away. His game species is way more diverse than that of the grasslands in our area.
One bird I really admire that’s not found here is the common loon. I was fishing up at Upper Red Lake last weekend and was blown off the big lake so we ventured into some new territory and landed the boat in a little, no-name lake to get out of the wind. We were fishing for blue gills and came across a pair of nesting loons.
They are very beautiful birds and masters of the watery domain, but when on land, they are one of the most awkward birds that exist. I don’t know if it was the male or female because both parents share the work of incubating the eggs, but to cover a span of about 10 feet it took more than 30 seconds.
Loons can dive up to 250 feet deep to eat small fish, insects, crustaceans, and in some cases even lake vegetation. They can stay under water for up to five minutes, but they cannot take off in flight from land.
They need about a 30-yard runway on the water to get airborne. An interesting fact about loons is that they have a different bone structure than other birds. Most birds have hollow bones to lessen their weight and make flight easier.
Loons, on the other hand, have solid bones. This increases their weight, which makes diving for food easier. Hollow bones splinter, rather than break, which is why you don’t feed chicken bones to your dogs.
With solid bones you might think loons would be marginal flyers. This is also not the case. They can fly 150 miles at a time. They have been tracked at up to 70 mph when in migration flight.
The female lays between 1-2 olive-colored eggs and incubates them for 28 days. This is about the same length of incubation as pheasants. The majority of waterfowl incubated for about 31 days. The loon is like upland birds in some respects and like waterfowl in others. Kind of a cool mix, in my opinion.
The adults hang with the young for about a month and they can then dive and feed themselves independently. When it’s time to head south, the adults leave the young behind. The current year’s offspring will stay in Minnesota for about 2-3 weeks longer and then find their own way south.
Common loons don’t become sexually mature until they are 2 to 3 years old. So, they just spend their first few years wishing they were older.
There is no mistaking the call of the common loon. When I hear them, I find it very soothing to my soul. If you ask northern Minnesota property owners, they sometimes have a different opinion. Getting woke up at 5 a.m. every day when you’re trying to sleep in might get old, but for me I don’t think it would. I get up pretty early even when I am on vacation.
There is a push that was getting legs this past legislative session regarding loons. Lead fishing tackle is sometimes ingested by loons feeding on the lake bottom. This is fatal to them and a push to eliminate lead tackle died as a result of Covid-19. I don’t think this effort is going away and would have passed if not for the pandemic.
The loon population is classified as a species of least concern. This indicates that loons are doing very well and require no special extra protections. It is already illegal to shoot or hunt them. They can be seen here occasionally in the spring on their way to somewhere else.
When one surfaces 10 feet from the boat, they are pretty amazing. They are a very big bird with a sharp bill and coloration not shared with any other bird. I do love the common loon.
Scott Rall, Worthington, is a habitat conservationist, avid hunting and fishing enthusiast and is president of Nobles County Pheasants Forever. He can be reached at scottarall@gmail.com. or on Twitter @habitat champion.