{"id":12279,"date":"2014-12-27T10:09:24","date_gmt":"2014-12-27T18:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=12279"},"modified":"2014-12-27T12:05:51","modified_gmt":"2014-12-27T20:05:51","slug":"loon-of-december","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=12279","title":{"rendered":"Loon of December"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Most loons have left the Lake for the Coast by mid-fall. A few stragglers can sometimes be seen in\u00a0the winter, but I had not\u00a0seen one previously. (All my earlier loon pictures were taken from\u00a0April to\u00a0October.)<\/p>\n<p>In its nonbreeding plumage, this Common Loon is one of four seen in late December. Its <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=5654\">breeding plumage<\/a> is seen from March to October.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12283\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/loon141223as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A view of a coot and a loon in the same scene is an unusual local sight. Normally, the loon is here in the summer and the coot is here in the winter. Being gregarious, this lone coot had previously tried unsuccessfully to hang out with grebes; now, it approached the\u00a0loon. The loon promptly dived and left a still lonely coot.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12280\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/loon141223cs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Six Horned Grebes watched from afar. They knew better than to try to hang out with a loon.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12281\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/hornedgreebs141223s.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am loon; admire\u00a0my finery.\u00a0The only other species I need have fins.&#8221;<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12282\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/loon141223bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Most loons have left the Lake for the Coast by mid-fall. A few stragglers can sometimes be seen in\u00a0the winter, but I had not\u00a0seen one previously. (All my earlier loon pictures were taken from\u00a0April to\u00a0October.) In its nonbreeding plumage, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=12279\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12279"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12307,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12279\/revisions\/12307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}