Some of you may have seen some unusual activity in the lower ponds today - here is the story from Evelyn Richer:

Good Morning Jane...

We have had an incident regarding one of the new little chicks (in the
West Danville family of loons)... There has been some sibling rivalry and
one chick had been left or abandoned on the shoreline.  We received a call
and Ray went to see what could be done.  Mark Luneau from Fish and
Wildlife assisted and together they were able to try to reintroduce the
baby chick to its family.  The family rejected the chick, convincing Ray
and Mark that it indeed was abandoned.  The chick is wounded as well, in the
hip area.  We have been in touch with Eric Hanson and also the rehaber in
Bridgeton ME.  Although the chick is very weak, Ray was convinced we
needed to try to save it... Ray left with the chick for a meeting with
the rehaber at Crawford Notch (half way between Bridgeton and here)...
the chick will be re-hydrated and transported to her facility for further
rehabilitation.  The little guy is very weak, but was breathing normally
after being put on a towel in a bucket with a facecloth draped over it to
resemble being under the parent's wing... he is to stay dry and calm in a
dark environment for his best chances at surviving.

We will keep you posted when we hear more.

This is sad news, but we know it has happened before. We'll hope for the chick 's recovery, and be glad we have dedicated people here trying to help. Thanks to Evelyn for the update.

Fred was able to get this nice shot of a deer early this morning. I wasn't up watching the sun come up, so I missed all the action. It's hard to get a good picture from the windows here in the summer because of the screens, but this was from the big windows in the living room, with some zoom.

The first glimpse he had of her resulted in the picture below. It was through a screen, but still, I thought you'd get a chuckle out of it. It sort of looks like she was just as curious about Fred as he was about her. The deer seem to be plentiful this year. Our mailman was telling us he's seen many more than usual along his route this year. We haven't noticed more than normal, but it probably was a pretty easy winter for them, and certainly the spring being earlier than usual would mean the does probably dropped their fawns a little earlier than usual, too. I found this interesting web site about the habits of white-tail deer: White-Tail Deer

Luckily, I just went back to my e-mail and found the following - I've seen some of Ray and Evelyn's shows and the photos are spectacular and the presentation very nicely done.

Hi Jane...

I neglected to mention that Ray is putting on a loon presentation to
benefit the Pope Memorial Library at the Danville Town Hall on July 8th
at 6:30 pm... there will be donations accepted to benefit the library.

It has been a couple of years since Ray's last show locally and I wanted
to let folks know about this one... there seems to be lots of questions
about the excess loon activity this year and this might be an opportunity
to bring up any questions that folks may have... I would like to remind
people that his show is about the loons in their nesting environment, he
has also revised his show with new shots that include the actual egg
laying, as well as the hatching process... all this done of course from
his blind out of sight of the nesting loons, and completely in the WILD.

So we welcome any and all to the show... and of course please come with
generous hearts as we support the Pope Memorial Library...

Many thanks... Evelyn (and Ray)