After a cold and rainy day, the evening was turning out to be sunny and calm. It sounded like a perfect evening to photograph the red-throated loons, so grabbed my camera and jumped in the car. I hadn’t gone 100 meters into the forest road when a crane took off right in front of me, so it was a promising start. The first lake however was empty, but it is also the one which is harder to photograph so I didn’t mind. Right after that lake though, I found to my disappointment that they had done a lot of logging and huge piles of timber were lining the road. The road was also a bit rough to drive because the forest machines had torn it up but I got through ok, it was a relatively short stretch anyway. Then when I got to the most photogenic lake, I found that it was empty, too – not a feather of a red-throated loon in sight. Right after this lake, on the other side of the road, there’s a small tarn and now I finally saw some life. Three ducks of some sort were swimming around, the tarn was back-lit so it was difficult to see the detail in the birds but in the end I was able to id them as teals. I hope I will get another chance to photograph them because the teal has a really nice colouration, one of the prettiest waterfowl we have.

But I was going to shoot red-throated loons, so I decided to check out another lake where I had heard that the loons hang out, even if I had never seen them there before. But just before I got to that lake, things got really interesting – there was a male black grouse on the road! I tried to get my car in an angle so I could shoot the bird from the driver side window, but I guess it was a bit too much because it strutted away from me and then flew off to a near-by tree. But at least it was on the right side of the road (considering the light) and not very far, so I got some pictures of it singing its love song in the pine. But apparently I wasn’t quite what it was calling for so it flew to another pine, a little bit further away. And after that, yet another pine even further back. I had a clean view though and blue sky in the background, so I kept clicking away while waiting to see if it would move back towards me. In the end it did, but it landed on the ground and I couldn’t see it from the car so I decided to call it a day.

And those red-throated loons? Nope, didn’t see them at all. But the evening turned out great anyway!