Smoke and Loons

Some of you may have noticed the news articles about the wildfire smoke last night or, if you've signed up for all the options on Code Red, you may have received a call early this morning. We had some really strong winds come through last night and they brought the smoke from the wildfires in MN into the Northwoods. This was the second wildfire phenomenon of the week. The full moon looked orange on Sunday night. According to the Rhinelander TV station that's because the smoke filtered out every color except red.

In an earlier post, I listed this link to the Common Loon Migration site. They have started doing updates for this year's loon migration. They don't have the Manitowish Lake loon listed this year but the one on Island Lake -- listed as "IS" -- is probably the closest to us. We can still hear loons calling on the lake but John and Hal indicate that they think a few have moved on. It appears from the migration site that the loons move from lake to lake in their area before actually migrating.

UPDATE -- At least some of our loons are still around. There were three in front of the dock yesterday (September 17). By the time I got this picture, there was only one adult and one young.  Looks like the little one is getting instructions.

From the loon migration site tracking information from last year, all of the loons had started migrating by mid-September so our loons should be going south pretty soon.