The lid goes on

If you wonder what happens in your lake after the ice forms, the answer is: Not a great deal. Sure, fish still bite, some more readily than others (bass being among the reluctant).

But in general, things get quiet, still and dark down there under that translucent, snow-covered sheet. The three inputs that make your lake so very much alive in high summer – light, heat and oxygen – are much less abundant.

Only cold-blooded creatures spend winter in the water (though foraging otters may come and go through near-shore holes in the ice). In temperatures not much above freezing, fish move around sluggishly; reptiles and amphibians stay mostly still or outright hibernate. Aquatic insects winter in the bottom sediments.

Except to the extent that it receives inflows from a stream or groundwater springs, your lake becomes essentially a sealed container. Very little oxygen gets in. The deeper the snow cover, the less light can penetrate, and the less oxygen plants produce from photosynthesis.

And vegetative life itself is limited. The rooted aquatic plants (weeds if you will) have long since died back. The populations of plankton – the tiny critters and one-celled algae that form the base of the lake food chain – have plummeted. Whatever oxygen was dissolved in your lake’s water at the time ice formed steadily declines through the winter.

If you’re able to look through clear ice to the bottom, you may see places where occasional bubbles of gas issue from the muck and rise until they meet the ice cover. But biochemical activity and life in general slow to a crawl. For fish and other lake creatures, it becomes a question of survival until spring.

Imagine what it’s like down there, under the ice. There’s barely a sound. Maybe the noise of a roaring wind penetrates sometimes. But there’s no sound of wave action. No splashing as eagles strike carrion fish on the surface. No swirling noises as loons dive down to fish. No whine of outboard engines. Just unbroken silence.

On windless days and nights, before the snowmobile trails open, it’s a lot like that up here on the surface, too. It’s a time to treasure the quiet, to feel life’s pace slow down, to enjoy a sort of suspended animation that lasts until spring.

If it feels miraculous to see the earth burst forth with life as the weather finally turns warm, how much more so to ponder the way lake life blooms again when at long last the ice recedes.

The loons: Still here

A week ago I saw them, through the living room window, in a frame of white pine boughs and trunk, far out on the lake, in a perfect row, four white spots on deep blue.

 

I had my suspicion but reached for the binoculars to confirm, steadying by pressing one barrel against the glass. Yes, loons, even at long distance, their shapes unmistakable, slowly swimming toward me, white breast feathers lit by a low sun.

 

So, they were still here. Or maybe these were not Birch Lake’s resident loons but migrants coming south from Canada. I was surprised to see them after all the cold, in winter plumage for sure (though so far off that even at 8X magnification I couldn’t discern the colors clearly).

 

I worried for them a little, the lake’s southwest lobe largely iced over and a crust on the main lake starting to push out from shore. I have heard stories of loons getting iced in, though it does seem somehow they know enough to leave before it’s too late.

 

The fact remains, loons need a lot of space in which to take off. Just as a jet plane is marooned at an airport with a too-short runway, loons are stuck if there isn’t enough water on which to run and flap up to takeoff speed. The qualities that makes loons adept divers and hunters – short wings for streamlining underwater, and bodies less buoyant than those of other birds (solid bones instead of hollow) – are handicaps when it’s time to get airborne.

 

If loons live on your lake, you surely know the sound they make as they take flight. It’s that sound Fred Flintstone’s feet made as he ran his stone-wheeled car up to travel speed: Pat-a-pat-a-pat-a-pat-a-pat-a...And not just a few pat-a’s. Loons have to beat their webbed feet over a long distance to lift clear of the water.

 

Ducks? Startle them and they seem to leap right up, airborne in an instant. Loons, on a calm day, might need to skim 600 to 700 feet along the surface. They need less room if able to take off into a wind, which provides lift, and yes, they do aim themselves upwind if they can, without the benefit of the wind sock human pilots use. Once in the air, they fly fast, some 50 miles per hour, though their flight is energy-intensive. Soaring is out of the question; the wings must beat every second.

 

So there they were out on the lake in the middle of an Arctic cold front, in all likelihood gone by the next morning or maybe even that same evening. Anyway, I will assume so. It looks like a long, long time before they come back.