Ice Out 2009

Add it to the Almanac. The official ice-out for Dam Lake in 2009 was April 19.

When we arrived Friday night there was still a substantial amount of ice covering the lake. By morning open water had spread out quite a ways. When we left Sunday morning most of the ice was gone, although we could still see some patches on the south side of the lake. I don't think it could have lasted through the day, so I'm calling it in. Official ice-out on the 19th.

Friday night ice. Sunday morning no ice!

The weather was warm this past weekend, but it was cloudy. Not great light for taking pictures to be sure. I think Dar and I envisioned doing a little work and then sitting on the deck sunning for an hour or two. We did sit on the deck, and we did see the sun for about ten minutes, but that was it. I'm sure we'll have lots of deck and dock time coming up, so we're not too sad.

One of the things I've loved about being up at the Dam Cabin this winter was the solitude and quiet. Kiss that goodbye! We took a walk down the road around eleven o'clock Friday night to look at the stars, and the noise was deafening. We disagree on what the noise was coming out of the swampy area by the brook, but I think it was frogs. They were putting up such a racket we couldn't hardly hear ourselves think! It can't be birds. Birds don't stay up and party all night like that. This didn't sound like the croakers we're used to down in the city, but considering where the noise was coming from, I don't think it could've been anything else.

There was a lot of bird activity this weekend as well. The geese were still there, but not in great numbers. The swans seemed to be gone. There were a lot of other water birds we hadn't seen before. I guess I better get a bird book if I'm going to try to identify some of them. There were mallards and loons, and I think I saw a couple of wood ducks, but there was one pair that looked like loons but had large patches of white on their sides, not speckled like the common loon. You orthodontists, er orthopedists, ornithologists out there. Let us know what we're looking at here. They were pretty anyway.

Whatthehellarethese Birds. Common Loon

We had an interesting adventure on Saturday. We drove into Aitkin and attended the annual shareholders meeting of the Mille Lacs Power Co-op. But I think that will have to wait for another blog entry. I'll try to post again this coming weekend.

Addendum: I did some looking online, and I think the birds I'd never seen before are Common Mergansers -- not to be confused with the Hooded Mergansers we saw a few weeks ago. What did we ever do without the internet?