p.92 #9 · Official Nikon DSLR images, videos and discussion thread
Common Loons are serious territorial nesters…. especially after the chick(s) is born. The Penguin Dance is an expression of aggression toward any loon that intrudes into the area, where the parents have a chick or two. And the size of that area varies, depending (at least) on several physical variables of the basin, including the convolution of the nesting basin's shoreline.
This parental aggression is justified because loons have a dirty secret that most folks believed was reserved for the brown bears…. infanticide.
The above have been personal observations. More on this later
robert
Some researchers say that the loon doing the dance is the parent and the other loon is an intruder. And there is at least one video online that shows a group of Common Loons, all doing the penguin dance.
Rarely, this confrontation escalates, into an all out physical fight
p.92 #12 · Official Nikon DSLR images, videos and discussion thread
I haven't tried a long exposure in quite a while, so I gave it a try this morning. The sun stayed behind the clouds the whole morning, so I just got some indirect light. This is infrared 850nm, with a 10-stop nd filter and CPL.
