In my last post, I told only half of the story of the explosion of the Cunard family — the cheerful half. If you read that post, you know that, following the eviction of the Cunard male and abuse or neglect of the chicks by the evicter, one chick made a daring 1/4-mile trek across land to Hasbrook Lake and is now happily ensconced in that loon family.

The other Cunard chick was not so fortunate. In fact, following interviews of campers and the camp steward, we now know that a day or so before the eviction that led to the desperate dash of one chick to Hasbrook, its sibling had swallowed the live bait and hook used by a camper. As he described it to me, the fisherman panicked and did what most do when they have hooked a loon: he cut the line. I discovered the aftermath of this hooking. The thoroughly consumed remains pictured above suggest that the injured chick became weak, took refuge on shore (as seriously injured loons do), and was attacked and killed by an opportunistic mammal or scavenged after death. Its four leg bands confirmed its identity; the threaded line and fishing snap I found confirmed the cause of death. So the eviction that occurred on July 30th and 31st was actually the second unfortunate turn for the Cunard pair during the last three days of July.

We have discovered several such hookings during our study, despite the fact that anglers do not trumpet them. Perhaps we should take a moment to describe what to do when a loon takes your hook. The best outcome is removal of the hook by the fisherman. Removal of the hook gives the loon a good chance to survive the encounter. Cutting the line, on the other hand, frees the angler but leaves the hooked loon with a death sentence. A hooked loon (or other animal) on the end of a cut fishing line has to contend with a hook or lure that it probably cannot dislodge on its own. Its feeding impaired or prevented altogether, a hooked bird will probably succumb to starvation or predation resulting from its weakened condition. The second best outcome is to cut the line and immediately inform a local wildlife official of what has happened so that he or she can get help for the bird. In many cases, a hooked bird can be captured and de-hooked by me or someone else trained to do so. In other words, if you cut, don’t cut and run. Those of us who study and love loons will do our best to save one that is in trouble.

The Cunard chick’s death is a case in point. Had we known about the hooking, we would have had little difficulty re-capturing the chick and likely removing the hook as well. In that case, Hasbrook Lake might have ended up with four chicks rather than settling for three!