Life is a roller coaster when you pin your hopes to the breeding efforts of a single loon pair. If the male arrives in late April and the female does not show until early May, you fret. If the pair places their nest on the mainland rather than an island, you grit your teeth and prepare for four long uneasy weeks. If black flies hound the male and female on the nest, you curse the flies. And if two chicks hatch after the long ordeal of incubation, you weep sweet tears of joy.
During the decades she has spent pulling for the loons on Deer Lake in Wisconsin, Shirley Lamer has experienced plenty of ups and downs. Deer Lake had three straight years of chicks from 2003 to 2005*, but historically chicks have been more the exception than the rule. In fact, chicks have only fledged from Deer in three years since 2005.
Nesting habitat is part of the problem. It is not abundant on the 150-acre lake. Small marshy coves at the north end are tempting for a nest, but they offer no opportunity for an off-shore site. A permanent island halfway down the west side is, in fact, the most obvious spot. But even there danger lurks. The water between the island and the shore is shallow. Predators apparently reach the island easily when the lake level falls.
This year, all of Deer Lake’s past breeding woes are forgotten. On about June 9th, Sharon and Lonn** (named for Shirley’s parents-in-law) hatched two healthy loon chicks. Week after week Shirley followed the chicks’ development from fuzz ball to adult size. She giddily posted photos and videos of the loon family on Facebook when she encountered them in her kayak or they foraged near her dock. One of her chicks, which we banded in early July, stayed on the lake until the first week of September. The other remained on Deer until mid-September before flying off to feed elsewhere.***
But Deer’s two chicks were not the only cause for excitement on the lake this year. Two juveniles from nearby lakes landed in Deer. Knowing that we marked most of the chicks in the neighborhood, Shirley leapt into her kayak when she spotted these young visitors. Her efforts have paid off.
On September 11, Shirley found that one of two juvies banded on Crystal Lake had landed in Deer to feed. The Crystal juvie foraged loosely with the remaining Deer juvenile and Lonn, the Deer male. Four days later, Shirley identified the Jersey City Flowage chick as a second visitor. While the JCF juvie has gotten no food from Lonn — despite efforts at calling and following him — the juvie apparently found the fishing productive. He remained on Deer on September 16th also.
You might have noticed that I called the JCF juvie “he”. The JCF juvie is clearly a male. How do we know this? Because — as you can see from Shirley’s video below — he
yodeled during his visit. This is not the first time we have seen a juvenile loon give the introductory note of the male territorial call. In fact, Paul Strong just e-mailed me that the fledged chick on Long Lake in our study area did so as he watched from his canoe a few days ago. And we have observed chicks as young as six weeks of age emit truncated yodels after being released following banding. So we can see that young males — at least some young males — begin to yodel during the first three months.
Between fretting over the nest location, worrying about black flies, rejoicing over the successful hatch, and tracking the growth of chicks over weeks and months, it has been a busy summer for Shirley. She might have been forgiven if she had wrinkled her brow and left it at that when foreign juvies started arriving on the lake for snacks. Thank goodness she kept at it. Her tireless and meticulous loon observations have shed light on both pre-migration feeding patterns of young loons and a truly unknown pattern — behavioral development of the territorial call.
* “Clune”, Linda Grenzer’s and my favorite male loon, first settled on Deer in 2003. He was then only 5 years old. He and his mate reared chicks there in 2003, 2004, and 2005. But after a run of failure from 2006 to 2008, Clune evicted the male on neighboring Muskellunge and settled there.
** It is Lonn (Sharon in the background) who is pictured in Linda Grenzer’s beautiful featured photo.
*** We have learned quite a lot about the movements and feeding patterns of juveniles in the fall months.