Live LoonCam on Lake Vermilion, Minnesota
VerifiedLive from a small island in Lake Vermilion in far northern Minnesota--you're watching a little loon family in the wild. Two loon chicks hatched on June 11 and have been swimming with the parents since June 12. They appear in the bay behind the small island where their nest was located, along with a duck family, an occasional visit from a Great Blue Heron, and regular sightings of a beaver swimming to and fro towing small branches to his construction project nearby.
The ice went away on April 28, the loons arrived the next day from their wintering spot down South. On May 12, one of our Live LoonCam team members spotted them snooping around this spot. It's the same location as their successful nest last summer. On the early morning hours of May 15, Mom Loon was up on the nest after laying an egg. A few days later we were able to see she was nurturing two large brown eggs there.
The Vermilion Lake Association has been engaged in this Live LoonCam project since 2021--this will be our 6th year. We have an Axis P1465-LE camera mounted on a post in the water and a custom-made parabolic dish microphone pointed right at the nest to pick up good audio. We're grateful to Access Broadband of Virginia, Minnesota for WiFi upload power for this livestream!
To read posts about this loon family over the past six years and see video clips of their adventures, go to the Loon Nest Cam page of the Vermilion Lake Association's website. We'll put news blurbs about the loons on the VLA's Facebook page too so that's another way to follow along.
Watch this intimate look at common loon family life unfold in real time from a northern Minnesota lake. From nesting and chick-rearing to interactions with waterfowl, herons, and beavers, the stream captures the wildlife activity and seasonal rhythms of Lake Vermilion's island ecosystem throughout the year.