fundraising

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In recent blog posts, I made the point that the course of a young loon’s life is more affected by its early experiences in Wisconsin or Minnesota than by conditions during its first winter in Florida. Winter happenings along Florida’s Gulf Coast do affect youngsters, but the amount of food they receive in their first several weeks of life makes an indelible imprint on their well-being.

One might have expected established breeders to show even greater immunity to winter conditions. Once an adult has claimed a territory, reared chicks to fledging, and survived several trips from the Midwest to Florida and back, what challenge is left that can threaten it? Can’t adult loons begin to “coast” a bit after these achievements? And if so, might the four months spent along Florida’s shoreline simply be a period of rest and recovery from the stresses of territoriality?

To some degree, established adults can coast. Having settled on a breeding lake at the age of 6 years or so, they have surmounted life’s greatest obstacle. Since senescence does not take hold until they are in their mid teens or 20s and since annual survival of loons in their prime is 94%, newly-settled breeders stand a good chance of holding their territories for a decade or more. But long-term ownership is never certain. The simple act of raising chicks exposes an adult loon to territorial challenges, because nonbreeders bent on claiming a territory use the presence of chicks there as a badge indicating its quality. So proud parents in one year pay the steep cost of increased territorial defense — and the risk of eviction — the next.

Recently we have learned an incredible thing. Ocean conditions that loons face during winter — whether they are 8, 11, or 15 years old — can reduce their body condition subtly such that they are prone to eviction from their territories several months later, when they return to the breeding grounds. Specifically, loons that have spent the winter in cold, dilute ocean water are much more likely to get booted from their summer territories than those that spent the off-season in warm, salty water. Here is what those patterns look like.

Fig. 1. Territory holders that experienced cold ocean water during the previous winter are more likely to lose their territory in a battle than those that spent the winter in warm water.
Figure 2. Breeders that encountered ocean water of low salinity were more likely to be evicted from their territories than breeders that had wintered in salty water.

An obvious question is this. Why is warm salty water beneficial to loons? Sadly, the answer is not obvious, although loss of salinity can be linked to increased runoff from rivers into the Gulf of Mexico, which reduces water clarity and can spawn phytoplankton blooms. (Both low clarity and increased phytoplankton are harmful to loons.) The negative impact of cold ocean water is also hard to interpret, but cold water forces loons (and other warm-blooded aquatic creatures) to expend energy just to maintain a high and stable body temperature. Perhaps the energetic hit that loons face in keeping warm in a cold ocean puts them at a long-term disadvantage.

We are not the first to discover that environmental factors in one season can impact animals in another. In fact, such “carry-over effects” are now known in several species of songbirds. Understanding carry-over effects is crucial to conservation, because they reveal the interconnectedness of the seasons. If the quality of a bird’s winter habitat limits when it can migrate in the spring, how successful it is at finding a territory on the breeding grounds, and the number of offspring it raises, then clearly we must take a holistic view to understand avian conservation.

From a territorial loon’s standpoint, poor ocean conditions in winter pose yet another challenge. It is bad enough that raising chicks puts a great big target on your back. We now realize that loons that encounter cold, dilute ocean water during a winter after rearing chicks will face a double whammy in holding their territory the following spring.

Our discovery of carry-over effects in loons might help us understand how the species’ odd system of territory eviction evolved in the first place. Perhaps natural and inevitable fluctuations in the quality of the winter habitat guarantee that some adult breeders will be vulnerable to takeover each year. If so, winter-weakening sets the stage for the evolution of territorial eviction as an effective behavioral strategy for claiming a territory.

We eagerly await the 2025 field season and have a very strong team in both states. However, field costs have mushroomed unexpectedly by a whopping $28,000. As it stands, we are $1,800 short of our goal of raising $20,000 to earn an additional $20,000 in matching funds from the Walter Alexander Foundation. If you are able, please consider helping us cross this threshold so that we can defray most of our field costs. Thanks so much to those who have already given!

The beautiful photo of the male is one of Linda Grenzer’s. It shows the Deer Lake male (B/S,P/R) becoming airborne during a takeoff run. Love that pink band!

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This seems a dark time for loons in the Upper Midwest.

Wisconsin breeding pairs fledge 26% fewer chicks now than they did 25 years ago. Our more limited data from Minnesota indicate low breeding success there as well. (A long-term study by Minnesota DNR confirms that chick production is decreasing in the state.) The decline in breeding success across the Upper Midwest concerns me. Do enough chicks still reach adulthood so that they can sustain the population of breeders?

But, as I have discussed in previous posts, loss of chicks while under their parents’ care is less of an issue than the escalating die-off of young adult loons after they leave the breeding grounds. Survival in this later stage of the life history is down over 80%. Of 99 chicks that we banded in 1998, 1999, and 2000, we had resighted 38 (38%) as adults by 2004. In contrast, we have reobserved as adults only 9 of 155 chicks (6%) banded between 2018 and 2020.*

Of course, these young adult returnees are troublemakers. They loaf on undefended parts of large lakes or on vacant small lakes. They intrude into breeding territories. Their visits force pair members to confront them physically and steer them clear of chicks. If the pair’s hints are not sufficient to drive the youngsters off, they are attacked. Naturally, the more of these 2- to 6-year-olds there are in the study area, the greater the chance that one of them evicts a member of the pair.

But these young loons are also the future. From their ranks come replacements for breeders that die each year. So young adults — warts and all — are essential to population stability.

The huge drop in the young adult population has turned our annual spring census into a stressful experience. In early May our Wisconsin and Minnesota teams race from territory to territory to see which of our marked breeders have returned and which territories from previous years are still occupied. Each year I fear that breeding lakes will be lost because the dwindling young adult population will be unable to fill breeding vacancies.

In truth, we have lost several of our traditional territories in Wisconsin during the past few years. We did not find breeding pairs on Bridge, East Horsehead, Hildebrand, Miller, Oneida-East, Pickerel-North, Tom Doyle, Swamp, or Muskellunge (Lincoln Co.) in 2024. We seem to have lost one of our breeding pairs on Bertha Lake and another on Butterfield Lake in the Minnesota Study Area as well, although our data do not extend as far back there. Still, there has not been a wholesale loss of territorial pairs in the Upper Midwest, which one might have expected from the high mortality of young adults. So while we have far fewer young nonbreeders milling around, the decline in the territorial loon population is, as yet, small.

Thus, the loon population might be more resilient than we had feared. We have long known that the majority of young loons that return to the breeding grounds never settle on a territory. Perhaps the die-off of young adults merely reduces their number to those few that would normally claim territories anyway. It is a hopeful thought!

Meanwhile, my work continues in both states. I am connecting with water quality specialists in Wisconsin and Minnesota in hopes of learning why we are losing water clarity in July, which harms loon chicks. And I am searching feverishly — both on the breeding grounds and in Florida, where most of our birds winter — for the cause of the high mortality in young adults. These are not quixotic quests. I feel that people who love loons in the Upper Midwest will step up and help them if we can pinpoint the factors that endanger their population.

If you would like to support my efforts to conserve loons in Wisconsin and Minnesota, please consider a donation to our 2025 field effort. We squeeze all we can out of every dollar we receive.

* People sometimes ask me, ”Could these missing loons have simply gone somewhere else? Have they gone to Canada?” It is a reasonable question. Ecologists have marked and tracked movements of thousands of bird species as well as many other vertebrates. With the exception of nomadic species, though, territorial animals like loons stick to a rigid set of guidelines with respect to settlement. If it is still alive, a loon will return to the near vicinity of its natal lake as a young adult to look for a breeding spot. (This is especially true of males.)

The featured photo is by Hayden Walkush of the territorial female on Two Sisters-East. This photo is among the 1906 taken by the team this year as part of our study of whether or not loons can be distinguished using artificial intelligence.

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We are over halfway there. Thanks to the generosity of a lot of you folks, we will be able to put a larger team of researchers in the field this year than last. At present, we can afford to hire a research staff of three interns in Minnesota and one — and a half — in Wisconsin. This is excellent news!

Our goal, however, is to place four interns in the field full time in Minnesota and at least two (we would prefer three) in Wisconsin. To reach that goal, we will have to raise an additional $16,000.

We are fortunate that a supporter has stepped up to match all donations for the 2024 field season up to $10,000! So that gives us a path to $20,000, if we can just raise $10,000 from other donors.

If you have already donated, thank you so much! Your kindness is keeping us afloat while we look to acquire long-term state and/or federal grant funding. If you have not yet donated and would like to — knowing that every dollar from you now will bring in two dollars to support this summer’s work — please consider helping out now. We would love to ride this generous matching offer to full funding for a robust 2024 field effort!

Click HERE to go to our donate page.

Just to convince you that we really are getting research done, below is a look at the abstract of a just-published paper written by Brian Hoover (a former Chapman postdoc) and me. The paper shows that males’ yodels get higher-pitched with age. This finding suggests that old males signal their age to challengers in order to communicate their aggressive tendencies. Let me know (wpiper@chapman.edu) if you would like me to send you the complete paper. It is not out yet, but the journal is allowing us to distribute the paper to our friends and contacts in order to publicize its findings.

Thanks to Linda Grenzer, a super duper photographer, for this nice picture of the male on her lake and a chick that has just left the nest.

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A few years ago, a non-scientist collaborator of mine suggested that I place transmitters on loons. This was a cool idea in many respects. Transmitters would permit us to monitor loons’ locations in real time and share those data with the public on a splashy website. I agreed that the technique would be thrilling and draw lots of public interest. But when the surge of adrenaline subsided, I was left with two troubling questions. First, what scientific hypothesis could we test with transmitters? Second, how would attaching transmitters to loons help us conserve loon populations in the Upper Midwest?

I am not knocking the technique. Transmitters are a potent tool used by animal ecologists to learn about patterns of migration, dispersal, and nomadism. Kevin Kenow and his collaborators employed satellite transmitters to show that typical adult loons breeding in Wisconsin and Minnesota spend the fall on Lake Michigan before heading south for winter. Kevin’s team also learned that juveniles remain on or near their natal lakes until late November, at which time they make a beeline for their winter quarters. So transmitters have helped us pinpoint times and places that are crucial to the annual survival of Upper Midwest loons. At present, though, there is no burning question concerning loons that transmitters might address.

What questions are most pressing with respect to Upper Midwest loons? With another year behind us and the 2024 field season looming, let’s take stock. How healthy is the population of loons in the Upper Midwest? And how can we best use our resources to protect them?**

Population Surveys

Two broad censuses carried out by armies of volunteers look at loon populations across large swaths of Minnesota and Wisconsin during late July. These counts are prone to fluctuations caused by changes in personnel and weather conditions during a narrow window of data collection. Still, they provide valuable large-scale “snapshots” that, in the long run, tell us how each population is faring. Furthermore, by comparing Minnesota and Wisconsin snapshots side by side, we might discern a broader regional trend.

Wisconsin’s LoonWatch survey has been carried out every five years since 1976. The survey showed robust statewide gains in loon numbers during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The most recent survey, however, revealed a decline in the Wisconsin loon population between 2015 and 2020. (The next survey will occur in July 2025.)

The Minnesota Loon Monitoring Program generates data annually and is based on six “index” areas. The enhanced geographic dimension to the MLMP survey suits Minnesota’s loon population, which is three times the size of Wisconsin’s. From 1994 to 2010, populations in two of six areas increased, two declined, and two were stable. But trends have shifted downwards in recent years. Since 2010, two areas have been stable, two have declined slightly, and two have fallen sharply. Surprisingly, the strongest, most consistent declines have occurred in the two most northerly areas (Cook/Lake and Itaska).

If we stitch Minnesota and Wisconsin surveys together, we can see that the Upper Midwest loon population as a whole increased (Wisconsin) or remained stable (Minnesota) during the 1990s and 2000s. We can also detect an apparent decline across the region that began in about 2010 in Minnesota and five years later in Wisconsin.

Poor Breeding Appears to Explain the Wisconsin Decline

Our breeding data from Wisconsin shed light on the recent population decline there. During the 1990s and 2000s, Wisconsin breeders raised healthy chicks with high survival. Brood size was split 50/50 between one- and two-chick broods. Beginning in 2010, however, chick survival and mass fell, and only 20 to 30% of broods contained two chicks. Furthermore, young adult survival plunged by 60% in Wisconsin from 2000 to 2015. Thus, poor breeding success and loss of young adults seem to be driving the population decline. There are simply not enough young loons being produced to replace adults that die.

Wait a minute. The breeding decline began around 2010, whereas the population did not begin to fall until after 2015. Are these results consistent? Indeed they are. Most loons do not settle on territories until they are five to ten years old. Therefore, several years must pass before poor breeding success is “felt” in the adult population. Hence, a statewide population decline beginning in about 2015 is what we would expect from a reproductive downturn 5-10 years earlier.

Hints of a Similar Pattern in Minnesota

We have only three years of detailed breeding data from the Minnesota Study Area. These data are too few to make robust comparisons with population trends from the MLMP. Still, we can report two preliminary patterns from the state. First, the adult return rate in Minnesota (80 to 83%) has consistently run 5% below that in Wisconsin.* Second, 31% of all fledged broods in our Minnesota Study Area from 2021 to 2023 contained two chicks. This number puts Minnesota in line with Wisconsin, where the paucity of two-chick broods reflects challenges faced by breeders since 2010. The 2022 MLMP report too cites reduced chick production in recent years as a potential cause for concern. At first glance, then, the loon population in Minnesota seems to be facing the same difficulty as its neighbor to the east.

Environmental Causes of the Decline

Thus, the loon population across the entire Upper Midwest seems to be in decline owing to reduced breeding success. This is vital information. But if our knowledge ended there, we would stand no chance of fixing the problem. To do so, we must identify the precise environmental factor or factors that impair loons’ ability to breed. In the past few years, of course, we have learned that decreased water clarity and increased black flies are two such factors in Wisconsin. That is a good start. However, it will improve our understanding — and strengthen any case we might wish to make for using local, state, and/or federal resources to mitigate the problems — if we can extend these findings from Wisconsin to Minnesota.

The Plan for 2024

2024 is going to be a pivotal year for the Loon Project. Why “pivotal”? Because we have built a conceptual and logistical platform in Wisconsin for understanding the entire Upper Midwest loon population. And we have painted a clear picture of a declining Wisconsin population and its causes. In 2024 we must pivot towards Minnesota.

Thanks to the hard work of our field crews, seed money from the National Loon Center, and the growing ranks of folks in Minnesota, Wisconsin and elsewhere who support our work logistically and financially, we have spent three productive years in Minnesota. We have identified 115 territories in Crow Wing and Cass counties that constitute our Minnesota Study Area and marked adults in about 3/4 of these territories. Our task now is to place a large enough team in the field to collect high-quality breeding data from our new Minnesota study lakes.

We will use methods in Minnesota that have proved successful in Wisconsin since 1993. In the spring we will clear cobwebs from our canoes, head to our 115 study lakes, and confirm the return or non-return of each pair member. On subsequent weekly visits single team members will locate and identify each pair member and document their nesting status or number of chicks. Most critical to our effort will be recording causes of nest failure and chick loss, because, of course, poor breeding success is the root cause of the Upper Midwest population decline.

Our growing sample of survival data from adult return rates will allow us to build a population model for the Minnesota Study Area. In addition, accumulating return records will allow us to determine whether the curiously high annual mortality of Minnesota adults that we have measured by three separate means holds up over time. If so, we will try hard to identify the source of the mortality, which would be very costly to the population.

Following the field season, we will determine whether the low breeding success in our Minnesota Study Area persisted in 2024. Then we will turn our attention to environmental factors that are causing nest failure and/or loss of chicks in Minnesota. That is, we will follow up our increased field effort with a statistical search for likely causes — especially water clarity, black fly populations, and weather patterns — that might be driving a breeding decline. It will likely take several years of intense field work to get a clear picture of such causes.

Support for Our Low Tech Approach

As you have surmised, our future promises to be unglamorous and low tech. We will not use drones, satellite transmitters, amphibious vehicles, or hovercraft to collect data. Instead, trained observers will employ the field techniques that have gotten us where we are today. We will carry our canoes to boat landings, put paddles in the water, find loons, and collect as much data as grit and elbow grease allow.

Now I am asking for your help as we do this important work to save loons in the Upper Midwest. If you believe in our work and wish for it to continue, please consider a tax-deductible donation to support us. In keeping with our theme of simplicity, we run a lean operation. None of our funding goes into the pockets of senior researchers. This year we will use our funds to support: 1) field interns who visit study lakes by canoe and collect data (about $6,000 for each of four interns covers a monthly stipend and reimbursement for gas); 2) lodging for the interns and myself (about $10,000, if recent experience is a useful guide); 3) economy airfare for me to make two trips to and from the Upper Midwest and gasoline for the motorboat we use to cover breeding pairs on the Whitefish Chain ($1800); and 4) color bands for marking loons and costs to replace broken equipment and needed supplies ($4,000). So I estimate our need to be about $40,000 for the expanded 2024 field effort in Minnesota.

By the way, we currently have enough funding in place to support a modest field effort in Wisconsin. However, increased funds directed to Wisconsin would also strengthen our effort in this most valuable long-term study population. You may earmark your donation to go towards our Wisconsin work, if you so choose.

You may use this link to go to our “Donate” page. Thanks for any support you can give us. We promise to make every penny count! 

The Future

Our future prospects seem bright. In addition to cultivating a large number of supporters across the Upper Midwest, we are forming an Upper Midwest research team. Obtaining funding is always uncertain, but our new collaborators have a good track record of acquiring major regional funding. We will apply for such funding this year and, if we are fortunate, might receive it by late 2025.

If all goes well, lake dwellers in Crow Wing and Cass counties will soon get used to the same peculiar sight to which lake residents in Oneida and Lincoln counties have become accustomed: paddlers in solo canoes, wearing bleached PFDs and binoculars, scanning the lake’s surface ceaselessly for loons.

FOOTNOTES

* This pattern is enigmatic. I can think of no reason why Minnesota loons should die at a higher rate than Wisconsin loons. One hypothesis is that the pattern is the higher density of loons in the Minnesota Study Area than the Wisconsin Study Area results in greater competition for territories in Minnesota. If so, what appears to be a low adult survival rate might instead be a higher rate of eviction. From a conservation standpoint, we must hope that eviction explains the apparent difference. If Minnesota loons truly die at a substantially higher rate than Wisconsin loons, Minnesota birds would have to offset that mortality rate with considerably higher breeding success.

** The beautiful featured photo, as usual, is by Linda Grenzer. It shows a foot waggle by two-year-old male that tried to claim her lake as its territory this past summer. We are slightly worried that this youngest-ever settler is a sign of population decline in Wisconsin, because four-, five-, and six-year-old nonbreeders would normally outcompete it for this territorial opening.

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The past month and a half have been a roller coaster ride, though mostly downwards. Six weeks ago I learned that major funding for my field work in Minnesota had dried up. I cursed my luck. I scratched my head. A thousand “what ifs” passed through my brain.

But looking back was pointless. In time, my mind began to turn to one cheerful and unassailable fact. Loon Project field teams in 2021 and 2022 had given their all to expand our database into a new state where, initially, we knew almost no one. As we began to meet the warm, supportive, loon-loving folks of Minnesota, we gained momentum. The National Loon Center provided tons of support, financial and logistical. New friends shared boats, gave us access to private lakes, towed our capture boat from lake to lake in the middle of the night, or simply drove us around in their own boats during capture to help us find and mark breeding loon pairs. Kevin Kenow and his USGS colleagues spent six long nights in 2022 capturing loons to swell our study population. When the dust settled in early August of last year, we were well over halfway to our goal of establishing a Minnesota Study Area on par with our traditional study area in Wisconsin.

That we have not been diverted from that path is a tribute to our great pool of friends and supporters in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and across the U.S. One day a few weeks ago was a first turning point. An anonymous friend from Wisconsin pledged $7,000 “to support the Minnesota part of the Loon Project”. I was touched that someone in Wisconsin trusted me with this gift, and moreover, dedicated it not to the loons of their own state but to those of an adjacent one. *

Just yesterday, another group of donors from Minnesota helped us reach another turning point. Roger and Phyllis Sherman, Don Salisbury, and Gwen Myers have together contributed $21,000 to the Minnesota Loon Project to establish the Judith W. McIntyre Fund to support our work in the state.

It is a great honor to feel that I am building upon Dr. McIntyre’s seminal work on loons, which took place in Minnesota, Saskatchewan, and Upstate New York. Judy had a gift. She did robust, impactful science that taught us a great deal about loons. At the same time, she was able to convey her passion for loons and loon conservation in a charming, down-to-earth manner that reached the public. I have a dog-eared copy of her classic book, “The Common Loon: Spirit of Northern Lakes” on my shelf to which I often refer. When I think back to my interactions with Judy, though, what I remember most vividly is the warmth and humility with which she welcomed me to the fellowship of loon biologists back in the mid-1990s. She viewed the study of loons as a calling to which all could aspire — even the young whippersnapper that I then was.

The new Judith W. McIntyre Fund is a timely and exciting development. This gift adds to the dozens from other supporters of the Loon Project from Alaska to Colorado to Maine who have stepped up to donate during our time of greatest need. And I cannot forget other folks who have provided the Loon Project team with lodging in Wisconsin (especially Skip and Ruby, Mary, and Linda and Kevin) and Minnesota. Friends and supporters have truly kept the Loon Project afloat in recent years. Gifts earmarked for Minnesota have now brought us right back to where we were before the loss of funding six weeks ago. In other words, thanks to all of you, our goal of producing a robust population model for loons in north-central Minnesota is back on the horizon.

Since I view many events in my life through the prism of my study animal, I cannot help but recall at this moment the plight of the former male loon on Jersey City Flowage, near Tomahawk, Wisconsin. (See Linda Grenzer’s photo of him, above.) Banded as a chick on Swamp Lake (9 miles away) in 1995, “Red/Red, Red/Silver” had easy-to-read bands and a relaxed disposition to match. During each spring for over a decade, I looked forward to seeing his bright color bands under the surface as he permitted us to approach him closely for identification. But he was suddenly at death’s door in June of 2014 after swallowing two lead sinkers attached to a fishing line. If not for the quick and professional work of the Raptor Education Group, he would have been doomed to a slow and painful demise. The REGI folks removed the sinkers, patched up his lacerated tongue, fed him all of the suckers he could swallow, and quickly got him back in the water. Defying the odds, R/R,R/S recovered his lost body mass, migrated southwards in the fall of 2014, and returned to breed the following April, as laidback as ever. He must have felt then as I do now.

I know what you are thinking: another feel-good story of overcoming adversity that features loon/human parallels! Now that we are back in business in Minnesota, perhaps I will plague you less often with such tedious anecdotes. But things have been going pretty well lately. So I can’t make any promises.

* As I noted in an earlier post, research in our traditional Wisconsin Study Area will proceed as before. That is, we will continue to build the Minnesota Study Area without compromising our productive long-term study of loons in Wisconsin.

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After losing our primary source of funding for Minnesota, we are facing a money crunch. The news came rather suddenly. It has left me pondering this sea change in our circumstances and wondering where it leaves us.

It is ironic to lose our funding at this particular moment. After intensive field efforts in 2021 and 2022, the Chapman/Loon Project database now contains two full years of field data from Minnesota. We have made scores of friends and lake contacts — mostly through the tireless efforts of students on the LP field team in Minnesota. Having marked one or both adults on 57 of 105 territories we cover in and around Crosslake, we are more than halfway to our goal of building out the Minnesota Study Area. Completion of our marking efforts in 2023 and 2024 would bring Minnesota up to par with our long-term study population in Wisconsin. Most important, we have roughly half of the necessary data to construct the first-ever true population model in the state using marked loons. So it is only a slight exaggeration to say that we have accomplished in two years in Minnesota what it took us 10 to 15 years to achieve in Wisconsin.

In short, our 2021 and 2022 field teams in Minnesota have built a great LP database that has all of the promise we thought it would. I would be remiss if I did not thank Kevin and the USGS loon capture team that contributed mightily to our banding efforts in 2022. A bunch of other folks helped out with capture and tracking of the Minnesota population in 2021 and 2022, including Mike and Natasha of the NLC, Richard and Terri, Dawn and Keith, Mary, and Kris. Jon, Melanie, and Mike from Boyd Lodge housed the field team during our work. Mike and John loaned us their boats. (Apologies if I have forgotten someone.)

Naturally, now that we have established a robust study population from which we will soon be able to extract reliable population data, I am acutely concerned about the sudden funding shortfall. But should you share my concern? If you live in Wisconsin or Maine or Ontario, why should you care about Minnesota loons? After all, we have excellent long-term data on the northern Wisconsin loon population that provides a sensitive gauge of the population trend in one part of the Upper Midwest. Why can’t we generalize the results from Wisconsin to Minnesota? In other words, if the Wisconsin loon population is thriving or tanking, isn’t it safe to presume that the Minnesota population is doing the same?

Minnesota and Wisconsin loon populations certainly seem similar. The states share a lengthy border across which loons fly freely. We have learned from recoveries of our banded birds in other seasons that the migration and wintering grounds of Wisconsin and Minnesota loons overlap almost completely. Adult loons in Wisconsin and Minnesota are of very similar size — and both populations contain adults much smaller than the loons of New England. Loons consume the same species of fish, are plagued by the same species of black fly, and must dive, duck, and dodge boats and fishing lures in both states. Importantly, lead fishing tackle — banned in New England — kills many adults and chicks in Wisconsin and Minnesota both. And, of course, loons are also loved and fiercely protected by most lake residents and visitors in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Doesn’t all of this mean that the population trend we detect in Wisconsin loons is likely to hold also in Minnesota?

Perhaps. But there are also differences. In general, loons appear to be packed more densely in Minnesota than in Wisconsin. Weather patterns, while broadly overlapping, differ between the states. Minnesota loons are more northerly, on average, than loons in Wisconsin. To presume that the two states’ loon populations fluctuate in harmony is risky. And, of course, if the Minnesota loon population echoes the Wisconsin loon population, our Minnesota measurements are even more important to make. Remember, the northern Wisconsin loon population is in serious decline. Minnesota loons could be declining in concert with Wisconsin loons, could be stable, or could be declining more rapidly than Wisconsin’s loons. Without running the numbers, we just don’t know.

The condition of Minnesota loons matters for another reason. Since loons in the Upper Midwest experience many of the same hazards as loons across the breeding range (e.g. water clarity, black flies, human angling, lead toxicity, and recreational pressure), our detailed and rigorous observations in Wisconsin and Minnesota have implications far beyond the Upper Midwest. By studying two populations 200 miles apart, we can compare factors that impinge on loons across populations. Any common patterns that we see across the two study populations are likely to indicate factors of broad impact — factors probably important in New Hampshire, Quebec, and Montana.

My discussion of the Minnesota loon population exposes a second irony. Minnesota provides a summer home for more loons — by a 3 to 1 margin — than any state in the lower 48, and Minnesotans love their state bird. Yet Minnesota arguably knows less about its loons than any other state in the contiguous U.S. (As I pointed out some months ago, what data we do have on Minnesota loons create cause for concern.) The LP database in Minnesota — once we finish building it and can build a model to learn about population dynamics — would permit us to remedy this unfortunate irony regarding Minnesota’s loons. Our work would alert us to any decline in the state, and our accompanying study of causes of reproductive failure could help us design and put in place a conservation plan that (with luck) could reverse any decline. Yet with this crucial milestone in sight, we suddenly lack the funding we need to reach it.

In truth, we have always faced challenges in Minnesota. Our most important lake there is Whitefish, which contains about a third of our territories, and where we are sometimes driven off of the lake by brutal winds and whitecaps. Even our “small lakes” in Minnesota are, on average, 50% larger than those in Wisconsin, which forces us to spend longer periods finding study animals by canoe. When compared with Wisconsin, everything is expensive around Crosslake and often in short supply — that goes for lodging, storage space, equipment, and most everything else. And tacking a Minnesota Study Area onto the Wisconsin Study Area has doubled my annual workload. Despite my determined efforts, I have not spent enough time in Minnesota nor have I been able to adequately support the field team there. Considering the 1,329 obstacles we confront in Minnesota — to which we can now add lack of funding — maybe we should throw up our hands and throw in the towel.

But then, loons could say the same. Territorial pairs face enormous obstacles each summer in trying to raise chicks. They must find safe nesting sites, defend them from predators, and incubate their eggs for four long weeks regardless of weather conditions. Hatching, which would appear worthy of a celebration, is, in reality, not even a halfway point for the pair. Instead, hatching merely introduces a new suite of hazards for parents, including new predators, the threat of infanticide by intruding loons, and the difficulty of finding enough food for their chicks — especially if they are on a small lake and it has been a rainy summer. And, of course, both parents are in constant danger of being evicted from their territory by young upstart loons that are always on the prowl for breeding territories. In short, the task of raising two healthy chicks, or even one, is incredibly daunting. If loons had the ability to ponder the vast array of obstacles to successful reproduction, they might never attempt it.

The desperate struggle of loons to raise young despite a host of challenges was illustrated vividly by the loon pair on the Little Pine-Dream Island territory this year. Little Pine is a pleasant, rather quiet lake on the Whitefish Chain. We marked the Dream Island pair in 2021, during which they raised a chick. Both pair members returned this year, so we knew they were veterans with a track record of chick production. But their experience in earlier years did not prepare them for the buzzsaw they encountered this past summer. When we found the Dream Island pair on May 27th, they were off the nest and spending a great deal of time under water. We quickly learned why. Black flies were tormenting them mercilessly. The relentless flies were present in huge numbers on the nest and on vegetation near the nest. They frolicked in great clouds in the air above the nest. And the pair members’ heads were blanketed by flies, each probing the skin for a spot to make an incision. Even constant diving by both male and female failed to dislodge these blood-sucking pests. During our visit, the male (pictured below in the water near the nest) made a pitiful attempt to mount the nest and resume incubation, but he could not bear to do so.

After surveying the nightmare scenario at Dream Island, I gave them a low probability of resuming their incubation duties in time to rescue the eggs and hatch their chicks. It did not seem possible that a male and female whose heads and necks were thickly encrusted with welts from hundreds upon hundreds of fly bites would see this nesting attempt through to hatching. But by some miracle, the pair hatched both eggs successfully three weeks later. I was flabbergasted. Despite 30 years spent watching nesting behavior of loons, this one successful attempt against all odds remains seared into my brain. It is impossible to know how many female black flies participated in the blood-letting of the Dream Island pair. But I suspect, like us, they had at least 1,329 reasons to quit.

I find myself drawing inspiration from the Dream Island pair. No one could have anticipated that they would hatch their eggs after facing such an unexpected and disheartening challenge. Yet offered the temptation of bowing to adversity, they stuck it out and triumphed.

Field ecologists are often told that they come to resemble their study animal. I am not dismayed by this comparison. In fact, if I can bring half as much determination and stick-to-it-iveness to my research program as the Dream Island pair bring to their nesting efforts, I will consider myself an unalloyed success.

This seems a good time for me to emulate the Dream Island loons and resist the temptation to give up the Minnesota work. The stakes are enormous. Minnesotans would be devastated to lose loons from the state or even from part of the state. And based on my work in neighboring Wisconsin, Minnesota loons are likely in trouble. Do I turn away from these good people — and a new set of loons with which I have begun to bond — when I meet some adversity?

So I am asking for your help. If we are able to raise $3,500, that will permit us to go to Crosslake and complete the late May census of the 105 or so loon territories that comprise our study area there. The census is a vital part of the year’s field effort, because sightings (or non-sightings) of adults we marked in 2021 and 2022 permit us to calculate the rate of return to the territory from the previous year, an indication of adult survival. If we are even more fortunate and receive $7,000 in donations for the 2023 Minnesota field effort, that will allow us to complete the all-important May census and also visit the territories again once or twice in July to determine rate of reproductive success. Reproductive success is a second important piece of demographic data that will help us refine the population model we build in two years. Finally, if by some miracle we are able to pull together $17,000 for Minnesota, that will permit us to do the census, measure reproductive success late in the year, and band enough new loons to bring our Minnesota Study Area up from two-thirds finished to fully marked. The 2023 banding effort would increase our sample of banded birds and strengthen the population assessment we will carry out in the near future.

If you have already donated to our study, thank you so much! If you have not yet contributed financially to our work and are now able to assist with our Minnesota field effort, we would appreciate it! As I have explained, your donation will be spent in an effort to learn about and conserve Minnesota loons. (If you wish to donate funds, but would like your donation to go to helping loons in our traditional Wisconsin population instead of the new Minnesota population, please specify that when you donate, and we will honor your request.)

Feel free to e-mail me at wpiper@chapman.edu if you have questions about our fundraising effort and how you can help. For example, if you can offer us housing in the Crosslake area for a week in May and/or for ten days to two weeks in late July, that would reduce our funding needs greatly and bring us closer to our goals.

Thanks for any help you can give us. I am anxious to complete the promising work that we began two years ago and will move heaven and earth to keep the Minnesota Study Area afloat. Things look grim at the moment, but I am hopeful that, like the Dream Island pair, I can weather adversity and emerge stronger on the far side of it.









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One often hears that clear water is a benefit to loons — if not an outright requirement. The entry for the “Common Loon Habitat” section in Birds of the World, for example, opens with “[Loons] prefer clear lakes….”. The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s page dedicated to the common loon begins with: “The eerie calls of Common Loons echo across clear lakes of the northern wilderness”.

An association between loons and water clarity seems reasonable. After all, loons are visual predators. Why would they spend time in water through which they cannot see?

Yet I learned in Wisconsin in the mid 1990s that loons do not strongly favor clear water. While many of my study lakes, like Alva and Two Sisters, are quite clear and produce chicks regularly, many others, such as Hancock and Oneida, are both turbid and productive. In short, loons in the Upper Midwest thrive and fledge chicks on lakes that vary between 3 and 20 feet of visibility. Indeed a scientific analysis showed that water clarity is not among the factors that dictates use of a lake by loons.

If you think about it, you can understand why a migratory species like the common loon does not overspecialize on water of a certain clarity. As we know from Kevin Kenow’s work, loons fly hundreds of miles across largely unknown terrain and then must land on a waterbody somewhere. If they are in desperate need of a meal at such times — as we might presume — they had better not be too finicky about the menu and the eating conditions. Flexibility must be especially important among juveniles migrating south for the first time, who are crossing terrain that is entirely unfamiliar to them and must find food nevertheless. And, of course, migration begins or ends in the Gulf of Mexico or Atlantic, where both diet and water clarity are entirely different from that during the summer months.

Wait. I posted a blog in the spring detailing the importance of water clarity to loon foraging success and explaining how rainfall was washing material into lakes and reducing clarity to loons’ detriment. Am I now taking that back? No indeed! Water clarity IS important to loon families in July. At that time of year, loon chicks gain mass much faster if the water is clear, and their adult parents maintain body mass better when water is clear. But further analysis has revealed an additional factor that is not so straightforward. I learned just a few weeks ago that loon chicks and their parents actually show lower mass in July in lakes that have high long-term clarity. That’s right; loons have higher masses when short-term water clarity is high but lower masses when they are in normally-clear lakes!

Just to be very plain here, I am saying that short-term water clarity (during the month of capture) increases loon masses because they probably see their food more easily, but some factor related to long-term clarity (how clear the water is on average, over many years) actually makes it harder for loons to put on mass. How do we make sense of this brain-twister?

We can only speculate about the long-term water-clarity-related factor that hinders loons’ foraging. However, there is a prime suspect. Human recreation is strongly correlated with lake water clarity. In other words, people like to spend time boating, fishing, and swimming in clear lakes. During the time when loon parents are trying to stuff their chicks with food, we humans are out there complicating the process by frolicking about in their vicinity. It seems quite plausible that this burst of human activity causes loons to lose precious foraging time and perhaps also access to their favorite foraging spot, if humans are using it. So we can easily see how human activity might cost loons some food and thus reduce mass.

If I am correct that humans impair loon foraging in clear lakes, then we can count breeding on a clear lake as a mixed blessing for loons. Clear water makes food easy to see and catch, but it brings hordes of humans that loons and their young must avoid — which cancels out a good deal of this advantage. Now, if a loon pair were to breed on a lake that had clear water and was inaccessible to humans, they would have it made! Sadly, this seldom happens in our neck of the woods.

In addition to this cool but somewhat distressing news about loon biology, I have distressing and not at all cool news about the Loon Project. We have just lost our primary funding source and are therefore going to be a bit tight for 2023 and perhaps beyond. I am hoping to use a “rainy day fund” to make it through 2023 in Wisconsin. Continuation of the work in Minnesota, which we began only two years ago, is now very much in doubt. If you can consider a donation to help us fight through this lean period — so that we can continue to learn about loon biology in ways that might help preserve the Upper Midwest loon population — we would really appreciate it.

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Photo: The male of the Little Pine-Dream Island breeding pair spent a good deal of time off of the nest in late May of this year, because of black flies. He and his mate fought off the flies, incubated their eggs and fledged two chicks this year. Little Pine Lake, on the Whitefish Chain, is relatively clear, and the male’s purple and white bands are easy to make out.