Canoeing - Annual Adirondack Loon Census

Every year, Holly and I participate in the annual Adirondack Loon Census. Over 300 different lakes are covered by volunteers on the same Saturday in July, and always between 8 and 9 am. This ensures that no loons are double-counted if they fly from one lake to another.

The lake we always cover is Sand Lake, near Piseco, NY. It's completely surrounded by state land, and involves a 2-mile drive down a gravel road followed by a half-mile muddy carry to the put-in. In some years, we've arrived the night before and camped, but today we just got up early and got there in time for the start. Both the drive and the carry went faster than we expected, so we got to the put-in about a half-hour early.



There wasn't even a whisper of a breeze, and the lake was like glass, reflecting the small mountains in the background.



As is usually the case, we counted one pair of loons and no offspring. We've seen some immature young loons with them in the past, but usually we only see the pair.



We watched them until 9:00 per the instructions, and then headed back to the put-in and the uphill carry to the car. And after all this, we were still home in time for lunch.