populations

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I am far behind schedule. Just as I am preparing to report which of our marked loons returned, the loons themselves have hatched chicks. While I am pondering which loons survived the winter and settled on their previous territories, the loons are busy warning foreign adults with yodels to keep them at a distance, wailing like banshees at eagles overhead, and overreacting vocally to every mildly threatening muskrat, osprey, or great blue heron that ventures close to their little ones.

But it cannot be helped. I am in the midst of a book and jealous of every moment not spent writing it.

However, I have not completely forsaken fieldwork for the printed page. I took the month of May off from my project to race around our study areas in Minnesota and Wisconsin and train the new Minnesota team. And I have now tallied the banded loons that we resighted. This is my report from that field effort.

In Wisconsin, 52 of 70 banded males returned to the territory they occupied in 2025, and 51 of 66 females did so. In Minnesota, 65 of 71 males returned, and 61 of 68 females came back. The proportions returning are shown below.

Proportions of banded territory holders that returned in 2026 to the territory they defended in 2025 by state and sex.

These differences look pretty stark. But before you jump to conclusions about them — perhaps making a hasty comment about your neighbors that you will later regret — let me explain them a bit. The Minnesota numbers are solid. We spent ample time at each of these territories and have observed each on at least three separate occasions to ensure that we did not miss any loons and that our visit did not coincide with a social call by the breeding pair to a different lake nearby. On the other hand, the Wisconsin return rates for both males and females are biased downwards — are too low, in other words — because we certainly missed a few loons that happened not to be present on the day of our single visit to their lake. Remember, we were all out to cover the Wisconsin territories this year and currently have no regular team in that study area.

Some of the strikingly low return rate in Wisconsin can be explained by the curious spate of tragic deaths that occurred there in 2025 — the South Two female, North Two male, Jersey City-Flowage male, for example. Still, I don’t like the look of the Wisconsin returns. In addition to the banded birds that we failed to relocate, several of our regular territories that have always supported pairs — Hancock, Oneida-East, Carrol, Greenbass, Coon, Thunder, Hilts, and Wind Pudding — were either devoid of loons or occupied by a lone adult at the time of our visit. Pairs have no doubt settled on some of these lakes since we stopped by to look, but others, I am confident, remain without a pair. A worry-wart like me cannot help being concerned that our recent field work in Wisconsin showed us a pattern that I have feared since first documenting the steep downward trend in young adult survival five years ago — the leading edge of population decline.

* The featured photo depicts the 12-year-old male breeding male of Gilmore Lake in Wisconsin sitting on his 2026 nest. Hatched and reared on nearby Hasbrook Lake, this male and his mate have fledged seven chicks over the past six years.

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As I set out from Crosslake, Minnesota to Rhinelander, Wisconsin on May 5th, scattered white flakes swirled across the highway. That’s odd, I thought; it seems early for fluffy aspen seeds to be floating about. But these were small, discrete flakes, not the irregular, cottony clumps that I am accustomed to seeing aloft during May in the Upper Midwest. Moreover, these flakes occurred not in wooded areas — as aspen seeds would — but beside open fields along Highway 1 in Fifty Lakes, in downtown Emily, and just north of Aitken, at the turnoff for Highway 169. In a realization that only a southern Californian could call a discovery, I thought, “This is snow…. My God, I have come to the study area too early this year, and it is snowing!” Indeed, my sabbatical this spring freed me to begin studying loons shortly after they had returned from their northerly migration. And winter, it seemed, had not yet taken its final bow.

The blowing snow that danced in the breeze between my Minnesota and Wisconsin study areas epitomized the kind of spring we have had here. Terri, Richard, and I had felt the conditions keenly out on the Whitefish Chain on April 30, as we censused our banded loons from a pontoon boat. We were buffeted by gusts that made a mockery of our jackets and scarves. I tried to lighten the mood. “North winds bring good weather, Terri,” I said, mustering false cheer and a feeble smile. “Oh yeah?” she replied tartly. It was sunny, but 38 degrees. At 9:45 a.m., the blustery winds had not yet blown up whitecaps, but here, towards the southern end of Cross Lake, the wind had a three-mile fetch. Every blast chilled us to the bone.

The loons bailed us out. The Cross-Echo Point pair foraged mostly apart but had no objection to our motoring slowly up to them. Evidently we were not the first pontoon boat they had seen. But writing down the bands was pure agony. I took off my ski gloves, snatched up the pencil, scrawled “W/S,V/V” and “Y/S,Ar/Y” for the affable pair — or at least, made markings that might have suggested that sequence of letters — and hurriedly put the gloves back on. Looking at the many unfilled boxes on the sheet where I should have recorded such crucial details as “Territory”, “Date”, and “On Lake Time”, I frowned and muttered to myself, “I will do those later”. The remaining loon pairs of Cross Lake — Happy Bay, Arrowhead, Twin Islands, Dam, and Moonlite Bay — were more than willing to show us their bands too, and the Rush Lake pairs that we watched afterwards were equally obliging. Still we found ourselves increasingly chilled as the morning wore on.

Our experience covering the loons in the Fifty Lakes region a few days later was worse. Richard and I awakened to wind advisories, which cast doubt upon the wisdom of hitting more big lakes. I looked at the map. “If the wind is from the northwest, we could try covering the territories that are protected” I offered. “East and West Fox might not be so bad”. We looked at each other, each of us sizing up the other’s commitment to the idea. “Well, let’s go to the boat landing; we should be able to tell from there if it’s okay to go out.” Richard replied.

The East Fox-South pair was 10 yards from the nesting platform, and 50 feet from the road, as we drove past and slowed to gaze at the lake. “Oh, that looks easy!” I said to Richard. Indeed, the pair was still in the area when we launched from the boat landing and eased up to them 12 minutes later. Seeing the bands of the female and unbanded legs of the male was a simple matter as they dove and surfaced comfortably beside the boat. “Grrr, that’s the male we missed last July in the fog,” I said bitterly. “But they are both sweet birds.”

Our luck held as we motored up the lake. Though we were baffled by an unmarked intruder in the East Fox-Turtle Bay territory, we found the pair soon afterwards just south of their nest bay in the main lake. “Copper over……copper cream….no — copper over red-stripe on left”, I said loudly in hopes that I would remember and write it down correctly a minute later when I could whip off my gloves. “And silver over iceberg on right. Wow….beautiful! The mate is green over….. — no two greens — on left and uhhh……silver over copper on right. Perfect!” In fifteen more minutes, we had nailed bands on two additional pairs — East Fox-North and West Fox-Channel — and, though chilly, felt good about our accomplishment. “We’re slaying ’em, Richard!”, I announced. Characteristically laconic, he nodded, “Yep.”

The real challenge that day was the whitecaps we faced on Mitchell Lake a few hours later. Yet Richard deftly tracked the northern shoreline as we searched for the West pair, which we found and identified quickly. And we bumped into the East pair near the large island in the lake’s center. They too were tame enough to give up their band combinations without a lengthy tussle.

After our visit to Mitchell, we could look back and count ten loon territories where we had identified both pair members, despite very windy conditions. We had had a great day. But we had also been fortunate to encounter cooperative loons.

The weather was equally poor in Wisconsin, where I began my work on May 6th — by canoe. There too I found unseasonable cold and wind all day long. With 107 territorial pairs to visit — and no loon team on the ground during the summer to check and correct our sightings — we were behind the eight-ball to start with in the state. Yet Anna from the 2025 Loon Project team and Linda braved the unpleasant weather and whittled the lake list down considerably by visiting breeding pairs at the northern and southern ends of the study area, respectively. That left 70 or so lakes between Rhinelander and Minocqua for me.

I planned to knock out my Wisconsin lakes in a weeklong sprint. I knew that it was possible to cover as many as ten different lakes in a day by canoe. So I simply hoped to reach that number of lakes each day during a seven-day stretch. At first my luck held. Flush with excitement at seeing the loons I knew well in my traditional study area — dozens of which I had banded as chicks — I covered ten lakes on my first day out and eleven on my second, despite consistent high winds. On my third day, though, I began to lose momentum. Burrows Lake was the turning point.

Burrows is our most westerly lake — and isolated from our main cluster. I debated skipping it this year, considering the long drive and my limited time. But I decided I should try to confirm whether the long-time banded male on the lake had returned with his unbanded partner. “Just knock Burrows out and move on to lakes 9 and 10 ,” I told myself. It seemed simple enough.

When I pulled up to the Burrows lakeshore and took one look at the angry whitecaps that battered the public dock at boat landing on the lake’s eastern end, my heart sank. Was it even safe to enter the lake in a canoe under these conditions? If so, how would I fight my way westwards — into the teeth of the wind — and find the pair at the west end, where they always stayed? I considered the situation and devised a plan. I would paddle in a southwesterly direction, hugging the shore for safety. Once I reached the island near the lake’s south end, I would pull the canoe ashore, and use that vantage point — from which the whole lake was visible — to scan for the breeding pair. The plan was intensely annoying to a Canada Goose, which huffed loudly as it vacated its nest near my landing spot on the island, but it worked. I scanned the lake from the stable, high ground of the island and turned up the pair. They were foraging together just west of the bend in the V-shaped lake — 300 yards northwest of where I stood — but across a seething ocean.

To reach the Burrows pair from the island, I extended my earlier approach of creeping along the shoreline. This required paddling roughly half of the lake’s perimeter. I first backtracked eastwards to the boat landing, then paddled northwestwards until a bend in the lake forced me in a southwesterly direction. As I moved forward at an almost imperceptible pace, I happened to pass two older men standing by a lakeside home. I could neither read their lips nor hear their words in the gusty winds, but their bemused expressions betrayed their opinions of my seamanship and judgment.

And yet, I made progress. The northwestern shore of the eastern bay provided a valuable windbreak, once I reached it, and aided my journey. “I just might pull this off!” I told myself. Although the birds had long since disappeared from view and might have crossed the lake in the time it took me to reach them, I finally saw their two black heads — and got another taste of the wind — when I passed the south-facing point that splits the lake’s eastern and western halves. The pair had moved only a hundred yards west from where I had spotted them earlier and were now a mere two minutes of awkward paddling away.

After my Herculean effort to reach them, I might have hoped for mercy from the Burrows pair, but I received none. They were as recalcitrant as ever, staying 30 yards or more away as the strong, shifting winds toyed with my boat. In the end, I had to settle for partial band sightings. The smaller, more skittish loon was unbanded, I was pretty sure, and the larger had a silver over a faded yellow and a clear bright white band and some other unknown one on its left leg. That, I decided, was the best I could expect. (Later I learned that my sightings were consistent with the bands of the long-time male breeder.)

I returned to the boat landing, secured the canoe to my roof rack, settled back into the driver’s seat, and breathed a great sigh of relief. In the quiet of my car, I closed my eyes and felt my pulse return to its resting rate. I began to get perspective on my experience. Chasing loons in whitecap conditions was desperately difficult, hair-raising work. Although I felt that I had never been in any real danger because of my proximity to shore at all times, I felt somehow exposed by my Burrows odyssey. Suddenly the notion that one can simply plan to identify the bands of ten different loon pairs for many days in a row seemed like pie in the sky. A day when you cover ten territories by canoe is a very fortunate one, not an average one. Identifying ten different loon pairs on seven days in a row would have required extraordinary luck, highly cooperative birds, and — above all — excellent weather. And the weather had been consistently atrocious. The following days, it turned out, would be no better.

In the end, I settled for 66 territories covered, even after staying in Wisconsin for an eighth day. I had fallen short, but I had also censused more banded loons than ever before in such a brief period. As I drove back to Minnesota on innumerable small highways and felt my small car buffeted by the same crosswinds that had toyed with my canoe each day during my visit to Wisconsin, I made a decision. I would call the trip a win.

The loon in the photo is one I know well. He is “Silver over Copper Cream, Red over Red”, a male that has held the Alva Lake Territory in Wisconsin since 2013. I encountered him on May 10 — at about the halfway point of my recent Wisconsin trip. He and his mate, “White-blue over Silver, Yellow over Green”, had begun nesting a few days prior to my visit.

By the way, you can view the featured photo of the Alva male — rather than a placeholder photo — by clicking on the blog title (“A Windy, Wintry Start”) at the top of the page.

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Following a long summer of capture, marking, and field observation, we have a new tranche of loon data from Wisconsin and Minnesota. The picture in Wisconsin does not change greatly from year to year. There we already had 32 years’ worth of research findings before 2025. But each successive year in Minnesota — where our research began in 2021 — increases our understanding of that population immensely. And with our improved knowledge of Minnesota loons, the status of the loon population across the Upper Midwest is coming into focus.1

Three demographic parameters together dictate whether a population of animals is increasing, decreasing, or stable, These factors are: 1) survival of breeding adults, 2) reproductive success, and 3) young adult survival. Recent measurements have shown us that the Wisconsin population is declining. And we know very well which of these parameters is responsible for the decline. If we compare our growing dataset in Minnesota to the trove of data we have from three decades of research in Wisconsin, we can learn whether or not Minnesota loons are headed in the same direction.

First, let’s look at survival of adult breeders. It should not be surprising that the most important single indicator of population dynamics (i.e. whether a population is stable, increasing or decreasing) is the rate of survival of its adult members. There is good news from the Wisconsin Study Area. The survival rates among territorial females and males both have been stable for the past three decades (Figure 1). This finding implies that once loons reach adulthood, they survive and hold their territories well. The decline that we are seeing in the Wisconsin population, then, must come about because of problems that occur before loons settle on territories.2

Figure 1. Annual survival rates of adult breeders on territories.

What about survival of territorial breeders in Minnesota? From measurements in 2022, 2023, and 2024, it appeared that adult survival in Minnesota might be lower than that in Wisconsin (look at these years in Figure 2, below). However, each year we get a better “read” on these numbers because our sample of loons becomes larger and more representative of the overall population. So the 2025 adult survival numbers are the most reliable ones we have to date. As you can see from Figure 2, there is no evidence for a

Figure 2. Survival rates of adult breeders in Wisconsin and Minnesota from 2022 to 2025. (Sample sizes are shown above each bar.)

difference in survival rates of territorial adults between Wisconsin and Minnesota. Minnesota, like Wisconsin, is seeing good adult survival. Again, this is good news!

Now let’s turn to reproductive success in the two states. Since we learned recently that the silver spoon effect is strong in loons, we know that we must look both at quality and quantity of loon chicks produced to get a good sense of how well a population is reproducing.

First let’s look at quantity. As Figure 3 shows, chick production in each region fluctuates greatly from year to year according to ice out date, severity of black flies, water clarity

Figure 3. Chicks fledged per territorial pair since 1995 in the Wisconsin Study Area and from 2021 to 2025 in the Minnesota Study Area. (Dotted line shows the trend in Wisconsin.)

in July, and other factors. Overall, however, chick production has decreased significantly in Wisconsin during the past three decades. Adult breeders are simply not producing as many offspring now as they did 30 years ago.

While Wisconsin data show a clear decline in number of chicks produced, it is too early to discern a trend in Minnesota. Chick fledging rate simply bounces around too much from year to year to see a pattern. We can say that chick production is at a similar level in the Wisconsin and Minnesota study areas. However, note that 2025 was a banner year for chick production in Minnesota and a poor one in Wisconsin.

Next we need to look at the quality of loon chicks that Wisconsin and Minnesota are producing. Our recent work has shown that chicks that fledge at low weights are much less likely to survive to adulthood and produce chicks themselves than are their heavier peers. Chick body condition has been falling for the past few decades in Wisconsin (see Figure 4, below).

Figure 4. Average body condition (mass divided by age) of chicks in Wisconsin from 1998 to 2025 and in Minnesota from 2021 to 2025. (Trendline shows Wisconsin pattern.)

The five years of data we have on body conditions of Minnesota chicks are not as many as we would like, but the numbers are consistent. Chicks fledge in Minnesota at similar — or even slightly worse — body condition than those in Wisconsin (Figure 4). We can infer that Minnesota is suffering from the same challenging chick-rearing conditions that have plagued Wisconsin (probably declining water clarity).

The third and final piece of the puzzle that we need to understand population dynamics is the survival of young adults. These birds are the breeders of the future that have not yet settled on territories. They range from three to about six years of age.

If you have been following my blog closely, you know that young adult survival of Wisconsin loons has seen the most dramatic decline among the three critical population determinants. That is, adult survival has held steady, and chick production has fallen somewhat, but the return rate of young adults to the breeding grounds has been abysmal — far below what it was a quarter century ago (see Figure 5, below).

Figure 5. Return rates of chicks to the breeding grounds 2 to 4 years after being banded as chicks in Wisconsin. (Data are missing for 2000 and 2007.)

We have been on pins and needles to see if this distinctive and rather alarming Wisconsin pattern is present also in Minnesota. Fortunately, our understanding of young adult survival has grown by leaps and bounds in Minnesota this year. Why? Because: 1) we started banding Minnesota chicks in 2021 and have done so every year since then, 2) most young loons return to the breeding grounds at three or four years of age in adult plumage, and 3) we regularly record identities of these young birds as intruders and loafers within our study areas. Thus, 2024 gave us our first glimpse at young adult survival in Minnesota using the crop of 26 chicks banded in 2021. And 2025 provided an even better window onto young adult survival there, since we could look at the return rate of 64 banded in 2021 and 2022 combined.

What do our findings show so far? In 2021, we banded 52 chicks in Wisconsin. Of these, 7 had returned as of 2025 (13.5%). We marked 28 chicks in Minnesota during 2021, and only one has so far been spotted as an adult (3.6%). For chicks banded in 2022, the numbers that have returned in Wisconsin and Minnesota, respectively, are 5 of 44 (11.4%) and 4 of 36 (11.1%).

These numbers tell a clear story. The percentage of young adult loons returning as adults in Minnesota is well short of that expected in a healthy population (a rate of about 41%). That percentage is also far below what we have seen in the past in Wisconsin (note the return rate in the 1990s and 2000s in Figure 5). In fact, the low return rate of young adult loons in Minnesota closely mirrors the dismal rate in Wisconsin.

In summary, it has taken five years to be confident of how the loon population in the Minnesota Study Area is faring. But our data now show that loons in Minnesota — at least those in Crow Wing and Cass counties, where we work — exhibit the same set of quirky demographic patterns that typify loons in Wisconsin and have set in motion a decline in the overall population there: 1) strong and stable adult survival, 2) poor reproduction in terms of both number of chicks and body condition at fledging3, and 3) a massive and diagnostic plunge in the survival rate of young adults (which are future breeders).

We have work to do.

1Thanks to Sheila Johnston, who took this photo of a molting adult loon on Gull Lake, which is just south of the Minnesota Study Area.

2I know. I just published a blog post in which I mourned the losses of many male breeders in the Wisconsin Study Area. I am still concerned about these losses. But in the long-term, which spans over three decades, adult males and females both have survived well. So I am hoping that the loss of several old, established male breeders this summer in Wisconsin was a blip.

3As noted earlier, it is too soon to tell from our data whether the number of chicks fledged is declining in Minnesota. We will gather those data over time. But we already know that Minnesota loon chicks are fledging in poor condition, just like Wisconsin loons. It is worth noting that the Minnesota Loon Monitoring Program, which has counted chicks across the state since 1994, reports a long-term and statewide decline in chick numbers.

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Loon calls seem to demand our attention. And sometimes they affect us emotionally. So it was this spring as I sat in a canoe with Sophia on the Blue Lake-West territory. While mopping up lakes after the pre-breeding census, we found the 16-year-old Blue-West female, W/G,B/S or “White-Green”, alone. Her behavior was ordinary, for the most part; she foraged, rested, and preened. Yet every few minutes, as if guided by an unseen hand, she lifted her head skyward and emitted a loud wail whose declining pitch seemed to convey profound and irredeemable sadness. Clearly her mate from the previous season was gone, and no male had stepped in to fill the vacancy. Indeed, White-Green spent the spring alone and still had found no partner in mid-June, long after the window for nesting with a new mate had closed.

White-Green was not alone in her solitude. On the following day Korben and I found the female on Hilts Lake, “White-blue-Silver”, nervously hanging out in the northwestern corner of that small lake. She foraged cautiously, unable or unwilling to drive off an intruder that foraged at will in her territory. She too found no mate with whom to breed this year. Having observed two openings for male breeders at the beginning of the year, I started to wonder if I was seeing a pattern.

I was chagrined to observe one of my favorite males, Green over Green, White over Silver (i.e. G/G,W/S or “Green-Green”) caught up in the male troubles that seemed to typify 2025. In 2015, when he took over Flannery, he created headaches for the resident female, who was rearing a chick on her own after losing her mate suddenly. But in the decade that followed, Green-Green became the steady, unflappable presence that his father was on Townline1. I smiled each time my schedule called for me to visit Flannery, knowing that I would get to check in on this tame, accepting male. But this spring, a few days after finding males missing on Blue-West and Hilts, I failed to locate Green-Green on Flannery. Instead, I followed his mate as she foraged throughout the lake. Every few minutes, she wailed pitifully — just as the Blue-West female had done. I took her behavior as a sign of Green-Green’s likely disappearance. A week later, however, Anna found Green-Green on Flannery behaving normally but reported that his left eye was cloudy. He remained on Flannery for the next month. But on July 13 he was found incapacitated by lake residents. Linda and Kevin Grenzer captured Green-Green and took him to REGI for treatment. Nine days later he seemed recovered and was released on Boom Lake. That was the last we heard of him until three days ago, when I got a report that his carcass had been recovered on the north shore of Washington Island on Lake Michigan. His presence there showed that he had recovered well enough to make a long flight east in preparation for his southward migration. We cannot be certain how he died, but his neck had a deep wound, which might indicate a prop strike. Life moves on, of course, but I am not looking forward to my next visit to Flannery, as I used to.2

The news was even more disheartening for the North Two male, “Red-Blue” (R/B,Ts/S). This tame 18-year-old loon — a veteran breeder that claimed the lake in 2014 — beached himself in early July. Linda and Kevin netted Red-Blue and took him to REGI also (see photo above, courtesy of REGI). He did not look terrible at capture, except that his right wing drooped. But he slid downhill rapidly and passed away within two days. The sudden appearance of necrotic tissue without other symptoms led REGI to conclude that he might have been electrocuted, perhaps through an ungrounded wire associated with someone’s dock lights. Naturally, his death was another blow. Despite the dearth of good nesting habitat on North Two, Red-Blue had raised four chicks during his eleven years on the lake.

Bad news comes in threes they say. So it was with a sense of inevitability that I learned recently of the third death of an established male during the breeding season in Wisconsin. G/S,Ar/Y (“Auric Red-Yellow”) was a skulker. My memories of Auric Red-Yellow are chiefly from capture nights. His was the ghostly black and white form that would take shape in the distance at night after we had motored slowly down sinuous, weed-choked Jersey City Flowage and spotlighted what seemed like ten thousand mallards lurking in patches of lily pads. But he was a successful parent, having fledged nine chicks with his even-more-skittish mate: Silver over Pink, Green over Green. Auric Red-Yellow was found dead on shore and emaciated, having ingested some form of metal. A vet must confirm this, but it seems that he swallowed someone’s lure, lost the ability to feed himself, and died of starvation.

Preoccupied as I have been with loon capture and marking, wrapping up the field season, and starting a year-long sabbatical, I have had difficulty processing the flurry of male mortality. I hope that the three males lost mid-season will be replaced by youngsters who had been waiting for their chance. After all, that is the way of things. Yet loss of male breeders does not always happen smoothly — or at all. The disappearance of our much-beloved male, Clune, from Linda Grenzer’s home lake in spring 2023 has resulted in three years (and counting) without a breeding pair on Muskellunge Lake.

In fact, I find this recent loss of five established male breeders profoundly unsettling. I have pointed out before that males are the limiting sex in loons. That is, males live shorter lives than females, and this tilts the adult sex ratio towards females. Put simply, males are in short supply, while there are ample females to fill breeding positions. Males have also been impacted by loss of water clarity. They, like chicks (and unlike females) are of substantially lower mass now than 20 years ago. As the “weak link” in the population, males seem most likely to be the cause of further population decline. Does the loss and lack of immediate replacement of these males this past season signal the beginning of that downturn? I hope not. But the pitiful wails of the solitary Blue-West and Flannery females after losing their mates made this year’s loss of males especially poignant and the memory hard to shake.

1Although there are many finalists for the honor, my all-time favorite loon was the old Townline male, Silver over Red, Orange over Green (S/R,O/G). “Orange-Green” was a doting dad who cranked out 20 chicks with five different females during an incredible 24-year run on his tiny lake just west of Rhinelander. Banded as an adult in 1994, Orange-Green seemed uncertain at first about his role on the Loon Project. Each time we launched our canoe and approached to take data he would eye us suspiciously for a moment and then relax, as if recalling that we were just those canoeists that liked to hang around with him and his family during the summertime. I was sad when Orange-Green did not return in 2018.

2The only good news to report regarding this episode is that another local male — this one an eight-year-old who was raised on Emma Lake and who made failed nesting attempts on Sherry and Hook lakes recently — is showing signs of claiming Flannery for his own and settling in with the breeding female. If he does so, the Flannery female — a pleasant, tame individual whom we banded as an adult in 2021 — will have no more reason to wail.