Loon Festival at Walker Lake

The 11th annual Walker Lake Loon Festival is scheduled for Walker Lake, near Hawthorne, on April 19.

That unique festival is being jointly sponsored by the Bureau of Land Management, the Mineral County Chamber of Commerce, the Nevada Commission on Tourism, the Nevada Division of Wildlife and the Walker Lake Working Group.

There will be free Walker Lake boat rides for visitors to see the loons, first-hand.

The boats will leave Sportsmen's Beach from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m.

More than 1,000 loons use Walker Lake as an important stop on their migrations in the spring and fall of each year.

Although virtually unknown to bird experts until several years ago, the concentration of loons at Walker Lake is the largest of any on an inland lake in all of North America.

For information, call Ron Wolven, Executive Director of the Mineral County Economic Development Authority at (775) 9945-5896 or the Mineral County Chamber of Commerce at (775) 945-2507 during business hours.