This is one of the few images for this weekly topic that I uploaded, rather than using the images already uploaded from the previous appearance, because I was looking at the very faint pastel colors of the sunrise sky reflected in the water and thought, We need more emphasis on those. This is a common loon (Gavia immer,) taken less than a year ago during a trip to Beaufort, North Carolina (which is pronounced differently from the Beaufort in South Carolina, because.) This one very kindly swam out from its cover on the shoreline of the estuary and passed close by me, and I did my part in holding as still as possible while snapping off frames – this allowed it to swim even closer for more frames. Can I credit this to my experience at being unobtrusive, or simply that the loon wasn’t that concerned and might have done this for anybody? I couldn’t possibly say for sure, so I’ll go with my remarkable abilities.
Now, some years back I’d snagged a red-throated loon, but this was the first and so far only common loon, and I didn’t have the fortune to hear it calling, which is a great sound (unlike the loons you hear in singles bars and such.) I really have to work on getting more exposure to coastal and estuary kind of subjects…