Thanks everyone!

We truly did what we did because these are such majestic birds. They are beautiful and the sounds they make are just unearthly. They nest on the end of our island and they mate for life. It is VERY unusual to find one still here at this time of year. When I got up this morning I looked out the window and the ice had formed all the way to my dock, so that youngster would have been toast if we had left him there yesterday. i was happy to NOT see him this morning. It's still wayyy too windy to go out and see if he has beached somewhere else nearby, but I can't find any sign of him.

I talked to my brother about it and he asked why I didn't just grab the bird and toss it in the air so it would fly away. We didn't touch the bird in any way, we didn't want to hurt it or give it any reason to even think humans are it's friends, because they are not. We also felt that it needed time to recover and get the ice off it's feathers and it may have been injured if we tried to throw it in the air.

For those of you who have never seen a loon or heard it's sounds, I found a great page with some audio files and pictures.

http://www.ns.ec.gc.ca/wildlife/loons/images.html

I'll post if it comes back or I spot it again but I hope it's decided to move to the ocean where it belongs during winter!