Lakeville Corner Almanac

Above is a momma loon teaching a fledgling how to fish. Everybody loves loons. It's their wailing call of course. There is usually only a single pair on a smaller lake and they nest very close to the waterline. They can't do much on land.  I like the call so much that I use it for my ring-tone. That can lead to some confusion when I'm out on the lake. So if I don't answer, you know I'm looking around for a loon.

If you know where to look, you can find (and pick) a lot of cranberries around the lake. And if conditions were right that season, it's nothing to pick 5 pounds in an hour. The real problem can be finding good recipes to cook them all. The plus side is that they freeze well so you can keep using them all year long. Cranberries grow well in this part of the St. John river valley and it has become a significant crop with artificial diked bogs . The dikes are quite large and interfere with the overland flow of water during the spring freshet and change the local flooding patterns. Who knows if this made things worse for the record flooding we had in 2018?

  Did you know that Bald Eagles sneeze? Neither did I, until I heard one recently, just 15 feet over my head. Never once in my childhood did I see a Bald Eagle let alone hear one sneeze. They simply could not be found in my area of New Brunswick thanks to DDT and other pesticides used by the forest industry. After they stopped spraying in the nineties, eagles slowly started to appear and they have become so common now that you cannot walk a small dog (aka "Eagle McNugget") without risk. Thankfully though they still find lots of catfish instead of dogs and cats. The true irony of the spruce budworm spray program is that it killed the birds and other wildlife that would have eaten the budworm. Nature has its own cycles and humans interfere at great risk.

On the the west side of the lake is a rocky little island, maybe big enough to park your car on. It's amazing how many birds can nest on this one spot. Mostly it's covered with Terns and they really don't like visitors. They squawked and dive-bombed me the whole time I was there taking these pictures. Obviously it was for a good reason as you can see in the photos.

My first thought was that these swallowtails are apparently carnivorous or something because they appear to be feeding on a rotting catfish. But google tells me this is common behaviour for most butterflys and is known as " mud puddling ". Apparently there is some nutrient on this fish carcass that they really need. I'll take a pass myself, but you know, enjoy. Yum.