MISQUAH — The flying is routine now, which is its own kind of news. Big Pelican’s two juveniles — the brave one that went first on July 23 and the careful one that went farther on August 2 — are airborne most mornings, usually within an hour of sunrise, running the length of the lake and turning at the narrows. Observers report they have begun flying together, though not in any formation a person would call organized.

They are also ranging. Two separate reports last week put a pair of juveniles over Loon Lake, and one Thursday morning had them out past the narrows toward Whitefish, which would be the farthest either has gone. The adults remain on Big Pelican and remain, as they have been all summer, unhurried — the chain-wide count holds at fourteen adults and five chicks, all five now flying somewhere.

What happens next is the part the town has been carefully not discussing. The adults leave first, typically in September, sometimes early. The young stay on — weeks longer, occasionally into ice-up — and then go, alone, without ceremony and without ever having been taught the route. They simply know. Nobody has a satisfying explanation for this and I have stopped looking for one.

Greta Solberg, who is eight and has kept the log since the eggs, has opened a page at the back of the notebook. Her mother reports she titled it, in capitals, LEAVING, and that nothing is written under it yet. She has asked twice whether the loons know they are going. She has been told nobody is sure. She has not accepted this, and she is right not to.