On Monday, April 8, 2013 I was on my way home from my morning walk in Washington Park (and coffee afterwards) when I decided to swing by the marina to see if there might be any interesting waterfowl.  In the north basin I discovered a Common loon, probably the same one I had photographed (and posted to my blog) several weeks previously.  I wasted no time in getting home to retrieve my camera, but was delayed by doing a computer chore for my wife.  When I arrived back at the north basin of the marina I found the bird was no longer there.

I started a search of the marina and finally located the bird in the channel between D and E docks.  The problem here is that those two docks have different access points, and if I chose the wrong one and the loon drifted the other way I could find myself too far for effective photos.  I watched the loon for a few minutes and finally chose D dock, in part because even though the sky was overcast the sun would be behind me and I might get slightly better light.

As I walked out the dock I watched the behavior of the loon and saw that it wasn’t reacting to other people walking on the dock.  And the loon had drifted over towards D dock, meaning I could potentially get much closer to it.

As I approached the slips where the loon was located I took a couple of shots from the main dock and noticed that, for whatever reason, the loon’s attention was very directed at the other (E) dock.  I eased about halfway out the walkway between the slips, then took a lot of photos.  I then noticed that a boat was leaving the marina and this tended to herd the loon even closer to me.  The loon seemed to be paying absolutely no attention to me so I eased out to the end of the slips.  By this time I was no further than 20’ from the loon and had to back off the 400mm my lens offered to get the entire bird in the photos.  Before I left the loon was so close that I couldn’t focus on it, meaning that it was within less than the 15’ minimum focus distance of the lens.  The entire time I was photographing the bird it just ignored me.  This is the primary reason I think the bird might be the one I previously photographed… it exhibited none of the wariness that I have often experienced with loons.

So here are some of the photos of the Common loon…