There was something distinctly wrong with the Buck male. He had never been tame. Indeed, he was one of those loons that made you work to see his leg bands on each hourlong visit. So, a few days ago, as I hefted my canoe down the steep paved road to the public beach that we use as our access to the lake, I knew I would face a challenge to get enough good looks at his legs to produce a convincing ID. But the male that foraged all around the lake with the usual female was well beyond a challenging ID. He was somewhere between highly vexing and impossible to identify. While the female gave me occasional good looks at her leg bands as I tracked her loosely during her foraging routine and seemed indifferent to my presence, her mate clearly avoided me and gave me no close looks at all. This was a reversal from two decades of past observations on the lake during which the female, not the male, had always been the tougher ID on Buck.

I paused at intervals to consider a change in tactics. But there is not much flexibility and creativity involved in IDing loons from colored leg bands. One simply approaches a breeding pair closely enough to see any bands on the loons’ legs but not so close as to upset the birds — and hopes for the best. This undertaking takes great patience and some luck, especially at times when black flies are out in numbers, as they are now, because loons shorten their above-surface time and seldom preen when hounded by flies. In an attempt to rally my spirits through distraction, I stopped tracking the pair after about an hour and circled the small island in the southeastern corner of the lake. Denying what was clearly a move borne of frustration, I told myself that taking my eye off of the foraging pair for a moment would allow me to search for a possible abandoned nest on the island. After all, I was weeks behind schedule in this first visit to Buck, and an experienced pair like the Buck pair should have long since started incubation.

No nest was evident on the island, but my effort to avoid for a moment the exasperating task of IDing the male ended up solving the puzzle of the male’s identity entirely. Draped over a fallen red pine on the south side of the island, I found the carcass of the Buck male that we had banded way back in 1999.

It was sad to see silver over blue, red-stripe over red gone forever after watching him vigorously defend his territory for 21 consecutive years and never lose it — even for a day — in all that time. But it is the ultimate fate of every territory holder to meet a fitter, stronger, younger territorial opponent and bow to them. That is the essence of terminal investment in old male loons. The death of this oldest male in our study area (26+ years) now leaves the placid 24+ year-old Bear Lake male as the most senior representative of his sex. I am hoping the day on which the Bear male meets a determined, superior opponent in a territorial battle is still several years away.