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I was skeptical when I first got the news from Melonie and Gin on East Fox Lake in Minnesota. “Larry”, they said, “has been missing for weeks.” Melonie and Gin have a bird’s eye view of the bay where the East Fox-South pair nests.* They know the bands of both adults, whom they call Larry and Lola. Very little that occurs on the territory escapes their notice. “We watch our pair like others watch TV”, Gin told me recently.

I should not have doubted them. And yet I am a scientist and have studied loons for 32 years. I am used to hearing reports of loon behavior that range from strictly factual and incisive……to 50% truth and 50% dramatization to….well, pure fantasy. So I followed up. “Missing?” I said dubiously. “He has not been positively identified since June 5th,” Melonie replied, “and we have seen only Lola incubating the eggs since at least a week before that.” She added that stretches of many hours had passed in early June during which Lola was off the eggs. Larry, who should have been incubating at such times, was not present. My team’s visits too confirmed Larry’s sudden absence.

I was convinced. Larry had vanished sometime in late May or early June.

Members of breeding pairs occasionally disappear. That alone is not news. Lead poisoning from fishing tackle, boat strikes, disease, and territorial battles sometimes claim one pair member in the middle of a breeding attempt. Faced with the loss of a mate, most adult loons — male or female — make a gut-wrenching but rational decision. They suspend the breeding effort, wait to find a new mate, and attempt to breed again later in the season, if time permits.

But Lola did not give up. In fact, hers is the first case we have documented of a loon of either sex losing its mate during incubation and incubating the eggs alone.** When both eggs hatched successfully on June 7th, Lola became a single mom.

Parenthood is a stressful business among loons. Lola had already challenged herself by choosing to warm the eggs on her own. Her obligation to protect and feed the two helpless hatchlings that emerged from those eggs raised the bar considerably.

I am not knocking Lola herself or females generally by describing the pickle she is in. Lola is a seasoned breeder who has proved she knows how to raise young. But female loons are 20% smaller than males. Indeed, at 3580 grams, Lola is slightly smaller than the average female. The real handicap that single loon moms face is the lack of a crucial vocal tool. You see, male parents save their families considerable time and energy by yodelling to discourage intruders from landing near the chicks. Lacking this vocalization, Lola must respond to territorial intruders either by hunkering down and hoping to remain unseen or confronting the intruders while stashing the chicks near shore.

The two chicks at East Fox-South are now two weeks old. As Melonie’s photo shows, they look good and are being fed steadily by their devoted mom. They are also of similar size, which suggests that Lola has been able to satisfy the needs of both chicks and prevent the corrosive sibling rivalry that often occurs in two-chick broods. But the family still must survive countless territorial intrusions and eagle flyovers before the chicks reach independence. Keep a good thought for them!

* Thanks to Melonie Elvebak for this nice photo of Lola alertly watching out for her brood.

** Back in 2005, a male on Alva Lake in Wisconsin faced a similar choice to Lola’s. An eagle killed his mate on the nest. Like Lola, he incubated the eggs alone for several days. But ultimately he could not balance his breeding attempt with his need to keep himself alive and healthy. So he gave up.

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It was just a bag in the water. But it was a large white plastic bag, one flap of which protruded above the surface of Little Pine Lake in our Minnesota Study Area. As Evrett, Isaac, and I paddled across the southern end of Little Pine to begin our observations of the Dream Island loon pair, the bag caught our eye and sullied the otherwise idyllic Northwoods scene. Looking to leave the lake a bit cleaner than when we had arrived, we fished the bag out of the water.

The writing on the bag told the story.

I have a confession to make. I come from a family of non-gardeners. When we see a beautiful tree or flower, we savor it. But the notion that some act of ours might alter the health or appearance of a plant is altogether foreign. A product of suburbs of large cities, I have grown accustomed to gazing at the verdant, manicured lawns and gardens of neighbors — then turning to look ruefully at my own. Yet jealousy of my neighbors’ lawns is not enough to induce me to follow their lead.

Of course, the suburbs are one thing. Lakeshores are quite another. The bag that Evrett fished out of Little Pine suggested that a resident on Little Pine was placing fertilizer on their lawn. While the decision of how to treat one’s lakeshore is up to each individual, it has consequences for all of us. Inevitably some of the high-nitrogen and -phosphorous fertilizer that produces a lush green lawn by the lake washes into the lake when it rains. Lake phytoplankton — free-floating, microscopic algae that inhabit all lakes — are starved for nitrogen and phosphorous just like grasses and trees on land. So adding fertilizer to lakes causes higher-than-normal growth of phytoplankton, which reduces water clarity and can have a variety of more serious impacts on lake-dwelling animals and plants.

It is too early to tell whether lawn fertilizer is at the root of the water clarity loss in the Upper Midwest during the past quarter century. We do know that heavy rainfall causes low water clarity. And we know that low water clarity hinders loon parents’ feeding efforts and produces emaciated chicks. But while we investigate the specific cause of water clarity decline, wouldn’t it be prudent for lake residents to stop using fertilizer on lakeside lawns, in case loon chicks are unintended victims?

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By the way, Wisconsin Public Radio did a short segment on our study and on the decline in water clarity we have reported recently. If you wish to hear how I sound after a day of field work and a bit too much coffee, you can find it at this link.

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On the Loon Project, we are all out to band loons in Minnesota. This effort borders on obsession. Since adult loons must produce chicks to be easily catchable, our marking initiative depends upon finding pairs with chicks. “Have you seen any loon nests on your lake?” is a refrain Eric Andrews and I uttered to many residents of lakes in Crow Wing and Cass Counties back in May and June. “Have you seen any chicks?”, I have begun to ask in recent days, now that I am on my second tour through the Minnesota Study Area. This question is on my lips so often that I now smile inwardly each time I ask it. I hope that I do not sound desperate.

People have been happy to answer our loon-related questions. Driven by love of the state bird, scores of Minnesotans have shared their observations of loons, nests, and chicks, given us permission to launch canoes from their property, and even permitted us to post their photos of loons to spruce up our blog and Instagram posts. (Sheila Farrell Johnston’s cool photo, above, of a territorial battle on Upper Gull Lake this spring is a case in point.) Minnesotans, it seems, are as concerned about loons as we are and wish to help us enhance the current low-resolution picture of the state loon population with a robust, scientific analysis. The outpouring of support we have received this summer has ended any lingering uncertainty we had about continuing our research in the region. *

A growing demographic disparity lends urgency to our efforts in Minnesota. You see, accumulation of data from the Minnesota Study Population — and comparison with corresponding data from Wisconsin — has revealed that loons are returning to their territories at a lower rate in Minnesota than in Wisconsin. That’s right. In Wisconsin, where we already know the population is in some trouble, adult loons are returning to their territories at a higher rate than in Minnesota.

The numbers speak for themselves. In 2023, 63 of 74 Wisconsin territorial females (85%) returned to their 2022 territories, while 69 of 79 Wisconsin males came back (87%). Those numbers are typical for Wisconsin and for New England loon populations as well. In contrast, only 81% of Minnesota females (34 of 42) and 82% of Minnesota males (37 of 45) returned in May 2023 to the territories they owned in 2022. Now, these are not massive samples. So you might be excused for dismissing these numbers as sampling error from which no conclusion can be drawn. But this is the third independent analysis that has shown a higher rate of return in Wisconsin. We saw the same story in the data from last year and from Kevin Kenow’s marked adults from 2015-2017. So the time for hemming and hawing is over. We can no longer escape the fact that loons in Crow Wing County are returning to their territories less often than loons in Oneida County, Wisconsin.

Before you hurl yourself off of your dock, let me add some perspective. The lower return rate in Minnesota does not necessarily indicate lower survival there. Why not? Because a loon’s ability to return to its previous territory depends not only upon its being alive, but also upon its ability to defend its territory from challengers. Minnesota loons might be surviving just as well as — or even better than — Wisconsin loons. If so, however, they are being evicted from their territories at an astonishingly high rate.

Paradoxically, a high rate of eviction in Minnesota, if it is occurring, could be good news. A high eviction rate might indicate that Crow Wing County is overflowing with young 4-, 5-, and 6-year old adults looking to challenge owners for territories. If so, frequent eviction reflects high breeding success of loons in the County (4 to 6 years ago), because it is Crow Wing County loon pairs (for the most part) that have placed all of these young whippersnappers into circulation.

Ok, I admit it. I am putting lipstick on a pig. I do not truly believe that our Minnesota loons are kicking each other off of territories often enough to account for the low return rate we have found there. I do not know how to account for the pattern. But I am yet not unduly concerned about our Minnesota Study Population. Adult survival, even if lower in Minnesota, is only one piece of the puzzle. Still, the news is pushing me to be even more inquisitive of Minnesota lake residents. Someone listening closely late this afternoon might have heard my favorite question echo across the gently scalloped surface of Duck Lake: “Have you seen any loon chicks this year?”

*Mind you, we are still enthusiastically following our long-term study population in northern Wisconsin. Wisconsin loons continue to yield exciting insights about age-related behavior patterns and impacts of water clarity on the health and survival of loon chicks.

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The hatch is underway. 2023 was a miserable year for black flies. But loon pairs that laid eggs in mid-May and kept incubating them despite fly harassment are getting their reward this week. Granted, this reward comes in the form of one or two tiny puffballs that need continual warming, must be protected from a host of predators from above and below, require gentle handling, and can only consume tiny food items offered patiently and gingerly. But such is the reward.

We are especially excited about the two chicks hatched in the past few days on Little Bearskin Lake in the Wisconsin Study Area. Why? Two reasons. First, with an estimated age of 34 years, the mother of these chicks is our oldest study animal. Second, our team happened to capture this female two years ago and discover that she was injured and ailing after getting entangled in fishing line. Our rescue of this ancient female allowed her to rear a chick with her mate in that year and another last year. If she is able to raise the two chicks just hatched with the same male, she will — in our view — have produced four “bonus chicks” above what would have been possible without her disentanglement. The ability to witness several of our study animals resume breeding after cheating death with our help is one of the joys of our work.

“Two chicks on Little Bearskin?”, you say. “I just see one in the photo.” Indeed, Linda Grenzer captured this picture of the single chick that just hatched on Crystal Lake near Tomahawk. I like the way the chick seems baffled at the distance between itself and its nearby parent. (“Why have you left me here?”)

Do not despair if your loons are still on eggs or not nesting. Little Bearskin, Crystal, and a handful of other pairs are among the intrepid few in Wisconsin that survived the barrage of flies undaunted and will hatch this week.

While most of our Wisconsin loon pairs were forced to abandon their first nesting attempts, Minnesota loons in Crow Wing and Cass Counties tended to respond to fly harassment by postponing their first breeding efforts. Hence, the bulk of our Minnesota pairs began incubating during the last few days of May or first week of June. However, a small number of stalwart pairs in Minnesota laid in mid- to late-May and hung in there during the fly weeks. Those pairs — which include Kimball-East, Kimball-West, Little Star, Big Trout-West, Ossie-Boozer’s, and Ossie-Timberlane — should hatch in the next week to ten days, if all goes well.

We are still hopeful for a solid breeding year for both study areas. Fortunately, loons follow the same philosophy that humans do when it comes to setbacks. When you get punched in the mouth, you don’t stay down. You get back up and see to your business.