What has been most striking about the dozens of loon territories we have visited in the past week has been how similar they seem to be to loon territories in early May. At that time of year, pairs have mostly recovered from the energetic stress of migration and have shifted their focus to breeding. With ice gone from the lake surface and perhaps a territorial challenger or two repelled, breeding pairs can search for a nest site, build a nest, lay eggs, and — if lucky enough to have a safe nest site or to avoid attracting egg predators to a risky one — jointly incubate them for four weeks until hatching.

Though the ice is long gone and challengers long since defeated, most loon pairs (over 90%, by our preliminary estimate) now face the same long slog of incubation they encountered a month ago. Having had their first nesting effort obliterated by black flies, these pairs now must start over from scratch. Thus, the video below depicts a common sight: a pair that has chosen a new nest site, started to lay eggs, and must work together to hatch chicks. These two birds, a 7 year-old male from Hasbrook Lake (background) and a 10 year-old female from Day Lake in Vilas County, seemed to contemplate this task with a degree of circumspection.

As nasty and harmful as black flies are, they are not as bad as egg predators. Flies are only really abundant for three weeks or so, whereas egg predators are always present. Loons behave as if they understand the time-limited threat that black flies pose. How? They commonly reuse nest sites that contain eggs from an attempt ruined by black flies, whereas they almost never reuse nest sites in the wake of egg predation by a raccoon or another predator. (Our recent paper describes this logical response to black fly abandonments.) Sometimes a males’ love of a nest site is so strong that he chooses it even though it still contains two eggs from the previous nesting attempt. In such cases, a loon nest contains two viable eggs from the renesting attempt and two duds from the abandoned effort weeks earlier (see the photo at the top, from Little Bearskin Lake this year). We often wonder how the sitting birds manage to cover and warm the eggs such that the good ones hatch.

In short, there is a new round of nests in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. During the past several days, as we have found pair after pair laying a second round of eggs and forging ahead in the hopes of raising chicks, it has raised my spirits. We will never look back at 2020 as a banner year for chick production, but the loons are not giving up.