I went on a tour of Upper Gull Lake territories in Minnesota on May 15th. Most loon pairs there were incubating eggs.* The same was true last week when Hayden and I checked out many territories in Wisconsin. And Kaidan and I found more of the same after I returned to Minnesota a few days ago. Over a third of our breeding pairs in both states are recovering from nest failure — mostly owing to black flies. But the remainder have weathered that storm and are close to or even beyond the halfway-point of incubation.

As Sheila Johnston put it eight days ago when she and her friend Darcy led me around the Upper Gull breeding territories, we are in our annual “period of hope”. The burst of excitement and territorial intrusions of April and early May have passed. Breeders have re-paired with their old mates or replacements, established a firm grasp on their territories, and are standing vigil over their eggs.

If there is little for loons themselves to do during incubation, there is even less to do for humans who wish them well. Unless you choose to chase away eagles — Taryn Schultz on Upper Whitefish told me yesterday that a “bear horn” is her weapon of choice for this task — we can only watch with crossed fingers.

And so we wait. But our waiting is not laced with dread. It is not an “I’m afraid to look” sort of waiting. Ours is an expectant waiting — one warmed by the knowledge that we are a few weeks away from the emergence of comically small, chocolate brown puffballs that behave like awkward, bumbling adult loons but otherwise resemble them only faintly. The appearance of these puffballs brings the hopeful tedium of incubation to a most satisfying close.

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* The striking photo of the Upper Gull – Causeway nest in the Minnesota Study Area is by Sheila Farrell Johnston, who led me on the tour of the Upper Gull – Causeway on May 15th. Thanks, Sheila!