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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 aspen seeds. But these were small, discrete flakes, not the unsightly clumps that I am accustomed to seeing aloft during May in the Upper Midwest. Moreover, these flakes occurred not in wooded areas 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 had freed me to return and begin to study loons shortly after they themselves 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 reflected the kind of spring we have had here. We had felt the conditions keenly out on the Whitefish Chain in Minnesota on April 30, as we censused our banded loons from a pontoon boat. “North winds bring good weather, Terri,” I said at one point, 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 gust chilled us to the bone.

The loons themselves 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 — South of Happy, 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 platform as we drove past the lake on Highway 1. “Oh, that looks easy!” I said to Richard as we slowed to observe them. Indeed, the pair was still in the area when we launched from the boat landing and eased up to them 12 minutes later. Seeing their bands as they dove and surfaced comfortably beside the boat was a simple matter. “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 finally pulled up to the Burrows lakeshore, I took one look at the angry whitecaps that battered the public dock at boat landing on the lake’s eastern end and 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? But 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 shifting wind toyed with my boat. In the end, I had to settle for “partials”. 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 on its left leg. That, I decided, was the best I could expect. All things considered, I was lucky to get it.

Once I had made the return trip to the boat landing, secured the canoe to my car, and settled back into the driver’s seat, I could reflect upon my experience on Burrows without wind howling in my ears. At that moment I realized the sheer absurdity of chasing loons in whitecaps. This was desperately difficult and hair-raising work. Although 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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It is springtime. Early spring seems like a child on the first day of school: excited about the change about to occur but fearful, hesitant at the same time. Spring comes with diffidence — one step forward, two steps back, three steps forward, one more step back….

Pity the birds. Trapped between the necessity of returning early to claim a territory and the threat of death by rogue icestorm if they arrive too soon, they push northwards. Loons play an even more dangerous game than most other species. They can only land and take off from large bodies of water. So they must track the coming thaw by hopping from one open lake, river, or reservoir to the next. When they have crept northwards to within striking distance of their breeding territory, they make probing overflights and gauge when it is safe to land and claim the prize that motivated their journey.

At times the glacial northward push by loons can look more like dawdling than caution. So it seemed with Lena, Sheila Johnston’s favorite loon, when, on April 3rd, she stopped to visit Chicago for four days on her return to Upper Gull Lake in north-central Minnesota. She was undaunted by the Sears Tower looming in the distance, the steady buzz of city life, and the throng of nature photographers gawking at her tameness and brightly colored leg bands. But she seemed in no hurry to return to Minnesota.

Alerted by a friend of her arrival, Russ Smith, a birder and photographer, documented Lena’s stay in Diversey Harbor. (The above photos of Lena are by Russ.) Lena found the food delicious, if unvarying. She seemed to take it upon herself to put a dent in the local population of the exotic Rusty Crayfish. She ate dozens of them. When he compares his photos from the four days of Lena’s stay in the Windy City, Russ feels that she showed signs of weariness on her first day that were no longer evident on days 3 and 4. If Russ is correct, then her urban stay near Lake Michigan’s southernmost point was a vital refueling stop for Lena, not just an idle visit.

After four days, Lena moved on. Since Sheila and her team maintain an annual vigil on Upper Gull Lake in anticipation of Lena’s return and have seen no sign of her, we presume that Lena made a short northward flight — perhaps to southwestern Wisconsin or southeastern Minnesota — and is now treating a new set of nature-lovers to close-up views. Sheila Johnston, Terri Rammer, and many others in northcentral Minnesota report that most males and a good many females have now returned to our Minnesota Study Area, near Crosslake. Whether she makes another stop along the way or not, Lena will be joining them soon. As halting as the spring has been, there is now not enough lingering ice to stop her.

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I must apologize for the scarcity of my posts in recent months. I am writing a book about loons. I am not sure if it is sound reasoning or not, but I have formed the opinion that each of us has only so many words to share in a given period of time. So I have guarded my words jealously of late.

I have never written a book before, so I am no expert. But I believe also that it is important to take some time away from writing. Countless hours spent staring at a blinking cursor wear me down. And I have been at it for over six months now.

It happened a few weeks back that I took the morning off to go birding in a park near my office. I take breaks to venture to nearby birding hotspots when I need them, not when the weather is most suitable. And it showed on this day. Unseasonably warm and gusty winds met me as I sauntered up the well-worn Horseshoe Loop Trail through Irvine Regional Park. “Geez, it’s hot!” I groused, stripping off my buttoned-down shirt, tying its arms around my waist, and looking enviously at a 30-something-year-old man in shorts and t-shirt who smiled as he hiked by in the opposite direction. The strong winds, I knew, would limit bird activity and, by stirring up leaves and branches, make birds more difficult to find. At this low moment, I considered pulling the plug on my ill-timed birding adventure and skulking back to the office.

But one bird changed everything. Glancing skywards from the trail, which is cut into the face of steep Puma Ridge — I spotted a falcon cruising eastward along the crest. The raptor was travelling at a good clip with minimal flapping by riding air currents deflected upwards by the hillside. “Whoa!” I shouted, and then, a few seconds later, “Dang!”, because the bird passed so quickly out of my view and in such poor light that I could not be sure whether I had seen a merlin or the larger peregrine falcon.1

I felt the sting of a missed opportunity. Could it happen that I would see only one unusual species on the entire outing and that my inattention at the moment of its passage would prevent me from identifying it? I put this dark thought aside and considered the situation. It was not yet 8 a.m. Normally, conditions would not be optimal for soaring birds until the ground had warmed and rising thermals allowed them to sail about economically. But today was obviously an exception. I ceased my efforts to find sparrows and vireos in the trees of the hillside and turned my attention to the sky.

My change in strategy worked, at least to a degree. As if it had sensed my frustration, the falcon made a second run down Puma Ridge. This time the bird sailed briskly over the lip of the ridge in full view. And since I was looking westward in anticipation, the sun illuminated the bird’s uniformly barred underparts – orangeish in the early morning light — and the diagnostic broad earpatch of a peregrine falcon.2

Relieved at having made the ID, I stopped to savor the moment. As I gawked through binoculars, the falcon abruptly folded its wings and began an astonishing dive towards the huge grove of sycamores that lie at the base of the ridge and constitute the southwestern border of the park. After a few seconds, the peregrine had reached an unconscionable speed, and yet it ducked and dodged among the tree tops in a manner that seemed almost playful. I was utterly spellbound by the carefree audacity of the bird. It was one of those thrilling moments when a natural spectacle so overcomes you that you feel compelled to reach out and connect with another person nearby. But no one else had seen the falcon plummet heedlessly into the trees. And so, as my eyes welled up and my jaw trembled at the beauty of the event, I settled for a shaky “Oh my god!”. It took several minutes for me to recover myself sufficiently to continue down the path.3

Since I am a loon biologist, I suppose there was a second reason why I was stunned by the peregrine’s magnificent plunge into the valley. Loons are the anti-peregrine, you see. Powerfully built for underwater propulsion, they have limited maneuverability when aloft. They do not bob and weave and make death-defying dives; they fly in straight lines or broad circles, descend at a judicious pace and angle, and coast to a stop safely and sedately. There is dignity, perhaps, in their aerial movements, but no dazzle.

I spent another half hour birding in Irvine Regional Park and saw a bald eagle (a rare sighting there), a merlin, and several other raptors that had exploited the weird, blustery weather to take to the skies. But in a peculiar twist of the brain, my stirring moment with the peregrine falcon caused my thoughts to turn back to my study animal and my book. You will not catch a loon diving at high speed into trees, dodging and ducking its way through underbrush, or even scuttling about on the wet sand of a beach inches ahead of a breaking wave. The movements of loons are glacial in comparison to most other birds. But I have made a career out of watching these haunting, ponderous creatures. And I am anxious to share what I have learned.4

1 In my own defense, female merlins approach male peregrine falcons in size. (In most birds of prey, females are larger than males, as in these two species.)

2 This cool photo was taken by David Chamberlin.

3 Shortly after watching the falcon’s heedless plunge, I thought of a cinematic scene that had depicted a moment of this kind. It was between Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, as they beheld the vast flocks of flamingos, mammal herds, and skies of Kenya in Out of Africa.

4 I suppose the book project has caused me to take my eye off of the ball with regard to field work. In any event, I have not had as much time this off-season to raise funds for the Loon Project. In the painful triage that must occur at such times, I have decided to use Minnesota as my base of operations this year and to hire only a single field team that will cover the Minnesota Study Area. We will make trips early and late to cover our Wisconsin Study Area, but we will have no regular presence there as in years past. This difficult decision is based on: 1) about 80% of my funds this year coming from Minnesota, and 2) the need to continue to collect data in Minnesota to improve our knowledge of its less-well-known loon population. It breaks my heart not to cover our Wisconsin loons closely, as we have for the past 33 years. I have known many of these loons for decades — since the time we first banded them as chicks. Please understand that I hope and intend to return to full-time field study of our Wisconsin loons in 2027 and from then on. I just cannot afford to do so in 2026. Thanks, everyone, for your donations this year. If we raise another $5,000 to $10,000, we will be able to mount a full field effort in Minnesota and collect enough data on our Wisconsin loons that we can ease back into full time study of them in 2027.

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I have started to call it “the Great Void”. It is the period between a chick’s first autumn and the point — at 2 to 4 years of age — when it has matured, molted into adult plumage, and returned to the breeding ground to look for a territory. Why “void”? Because we know almost nothing about loons during this period.

The Great Void used to be a nuisance. It was frustrating to think that our birds were passing through so many critical life stages without us knowing where they were or whether they were alive. But we have now pinpointed high mortality of young adult loons as the greatest threat to the loon population of Wisconsin and, more recently, Minnesota as well. “Nuisance” no longer captures the depth of our frustration. We now have to admit that we know least about our loons during the time when it matters most. So I think we need to begin to describe the Great Void as a grave concern.

Yet we are not completely in the dark. We get a glimpse into the Great Void now and then. Here is the story of one glimpse we got in March of 2024 from the wintering grounds.

As soon as he spotted it, Jim “Crater” Anderson could see the bird was in trouble. Seabirds in Panama City, Florida do not lounge on the beach in late afternoon sun like tourists from Ohio. And this one was looking especially out of sorts. It was well above the high tide point, sitting in dry sand. Crater did not think twice about interrupting his daily 10,000 steps to come to its aid.

“That is not how a duck should sit”, Crater thought, looking at the bird. Indeed, with legs splayed right and left of its body and belly in the sand, it was a curious sight. The animal skootched awkwardly across the beach and flapped frantically as he approached to within five yards, making him wonder if its legs were broken. At that moment, he felt strongly that he must capture the bird and take it to someone who could help. He removed his grey hoodie and, crouching low to the ground to appear less threatening, crept still closer. “It’s okay, I am going to get you to someone who can fix you up”, he murmurred reassuringly.

The bird was not mollified by Crater’s soothing words. Now that he was within six feet, it whipped its head around and eyed him suspiciously. He steeled himself and grabbed it, enduring its painful nipping at his arms and hands. As quickly as he could, he swaddled the bird in his hoodie to calm it and walked briskly to Rick and Sheila Harper’s house. “They have parrots”, he reasoned. “They’ll know what to do.”

The bird he was carrying was bigger and heavier than he had thought it would be – much larger than any duck he had handled. Its bill was thick and dagger-like. Its legs were not broken, just connected at the very end of its body. And – this was the biggest surprise of all — someone had placed four brightly‑colored bands on the bird’s legs. “What is that all about?” he thought.

When he arrived at Rick and Sheila’s, Kim Youngbeck was also there. The four friends placed the bird in a cat carrier that was snug but secure and set about trying to learn what kind of bird it was and how they could help it. Sheila’s parents are birdwatchers who live in Park Falls, Minnesota. She sent them some photos in hopes that they could help with the ID. “That’s a loon!”, they announced with equal parts excitement and concern.

The Florida Fish and Game contact they spoke to informed them that a loon would not do well in captivity and that they should return the bird quickly to where they had found it. Dutifully, the friends walked back to the beach. Night had fallen in the hour or so since Crater had first captured the loon. Knowing that coyotes and raccoons prowled the beach at night, they decided to place it higher in the dunes than it had been at first. That seemed safer.   

Still, they worried about the loon sitting exposed in the darkness. The bird had not tried to get away from them after they placed it back on the sand. And when they went back to check an hour later, it had not budged. At that point, Kimberly volunteered to take the bird for the night.

Back at home, Kimberly wracked her brain to think what was wrong with the animal. Was it weak from hunger? Knowing that its diet was mainly fish, she offered it the only fish she could – some tilapia filets from the fridge — on a small plate. The loon showed no interest. She looked at the clock and realized that it was 10 p.m. Whatever they were going to do for this loon would have to wait until the next day. She turned the lights out, draped a sheet over the carrier, and hoped it would get some rest.  

The next morning Crater and Kimberly strategized again about the bird. It looked pretty healthy and fiesty, they agreed. They could see no reason to hold onto it any longer. Together they decided to return it to the ocean.

The two friends took the carrier to the beach and removed the loon. This time, though, they let it go at the water’s edge, where the waves were breaking on shore. With furrowed brows and hands on hips, Crater and Kimberly watched as the bird bravely faced the waves and began to crawl towards the ocean. It was not pretty. On five occasions, a wave caught the loon and hurled it backwards several yards towards the beach. Kimberly was reminded of videos she had seen of tiny sea turtles heroicly battling the surf to reach the sea after hatching. The bird did not give up, however. Eventually it was able to take advantage of a lull between waves, reach water deep enough for a dive, and plunge beneath the crashing surf. Kimberly and Crater cheered to see its head pop up thirty yards from shore, well beyond the surf zone.

After a late March sojourn with beach-going humans, the loon, which we had banded the previous summer on West Twin Lake in north-central Minnesota, was back where it belonged — and looking none the worse for wear. We have no idea what brought this nine-month-old to shore.

We got a second, more sobering glimpse into the Great Void in late August 2025.

Battered by stiff winds and high waves from Hurricane Erin, the loon sat within the surf zone on Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York, twelve miles southeast of the Statue of Liberty. Waves crashed over it — even submerging it entirely on occasion. Susan Garman and her ten-year-old son Justin had made a quick trip to the shore to gawk at the surging whitecaps. But when they spotted a large bird that was being pummeled by waves and seemed unable to help itself, their light-hearted jaunt to marvel at nature’s fury took a serious turn.

They hurriedly shed their shoes, waded into the surf, and approached the bird. It looked as bad as Susan had feared it would: dazed, bedraggled, and water-logged. Worse still, the bird showed little fear of Susan and her son when they approached it. “You’re hurt, aren’t you?” she said to the animal, a comforting, motherly tone in her voice. “We are going to help you”.

Yet after she had gathered the bird up, Susan’s concern deepened. She had hoped to feel a smooth, reassuring mass of pectoral muscle when her fingers reached around its chest and belly, but instead, she encountered the sharp protruding keel of its sternum. So it was also emaciated. “Oh, buddy, I am so sorry!”, she whispered. It lifted Susan’s spirits slightly to see that the bird had four bright color bands on its legs. Her mind now racing, she reasoned that the person who had marked this bird would surely wish to help them save it.

She and Justin carried the bird to their home to do what they could. They nestled it in some blankets in the kitchen; it made no objection. Susan Googled “injured bird”, and found some local rehabbers and veterinarians, but no one that she reached could or would help. Justin submitted a photo of the bird to Google Lens to try and identify it. Lens came back with: “The bird in the image is a Common Loon.” “A loon!”, Susan repeated, trying to square her recollection of that glamorous northern species with the unsightly mass of soaked, tousled feathers on her kitchen floor. She and Justin were cheered by their ability to identify the bird they had rescued. They finally seemed to be getting somewhere.

But the loon was very weak and slipping away. “We are here with you”, was all she could muster, her voice softer and breaking from sadness and frustration. Finally, the loon stretched its head forward for a moment, pulled it back again to rest on its chest, and let out its last breath. Crushed by the loss herself, Susan looked for a positive to share with her distraught son. “At least it did not die alone”, she offered.1

We will have to record many more encounters of our young marked loons before we can shed much light on the alarmingly high mortality of loons during their first few years of life. Meanwhile, I am keeping my fingers crossed that other loons of ours who are in need of aid find such generous, compassionate people as these two youngsters did.

1 – We had banded the loon that Susan and Justin found as a chick on Upper Hay Lake, near Pequot Lakes, Minnesota, in July of 2024. So it was just over a year old when it perished. From the work of Kevin Kenow and his team, we know that loons from the Upper Midwest that winter off of Florida make their way up the Atlantic coast to spend the summers of their first and second years of life as far north as the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Thus, this young bird was probably on its way back to the wintering grounds in Florida.

Our paper on the Silver Spoon effect in loons has just been published online. You can read it at:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-025-05836-8?utm_source=rct_congratemailt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=oa_20251124&utm_content=10.1007/s00442-025-05836-8

The top photo is of the loon from Panama City Beach, Florida. Photo by Jim Anderson.

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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.

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There are several moments each year when I find myself out on a lake at night during capture season and suddenly think I must be insane. One such moment occurred at about 2 a.m. last night in Minnesota. Richard was driving the motorboat; Owen and I were perched in the bow scanning for loons. We swept the spotlight back and forth, back and forth across the dark surface of East Fox Lake. But we spent very little time in contact with loons. Our spotlight mostly caught dense, swirling tendrils of fog hanging in the air. Occasionally we broke free from this suffocating cloud for short intervals and the spotlight suddenly gave us an unobstructed view of 100 yards in every direction. Fortune was not on our side, however. We saw no loons in parts of the lake that were free of fog.

Loon capture — even loon-spotting — seemed highly improbable under these circumstances. I looked back at Richard behind me and Owen to my left. Their presence somehow reassured me that what we were doing — trying to locate a family of diving birds in total darkness and pea soup fog on a 241-acre lake so that we could lure them close to the boat with imitated calls and scoop them up in a muskie net — qualified as rational behavior. We searched on, fruitlessly. “Kill the motor Richard”, I said finally. “Let’s try playbacks.” Yet the loon pair at East Fox-South and their two 7-week-old chicks did not give away their position by vocalizing in response to our crisp recordings of wails from Maine and yodels from Michigan. Maybe it was regional bias.

We continued stalking the silent loon family. I directed Richard to steer right or left, so as to remain within the loon pair’s favorite part of the territory. Fifteen, twenty minutes passed. As our hopes of finding the family were beginning to fade, we caught sight of two black loon heads ten yards apart, partially obscured by a fog bank. “We need the unbanded male”, I reminded Owen. “Okay”, he whispered good-naturedly. With the two adults separated, we could not determine which was larger, forcing a split-second decision. Owen spotlighted the nearer adult. As we drew close to the bird, however, we realized our mistake. “Banded!” we both shout-whispered simultaneously. Owen swiveled the light quickly to the male we wanted. We crept up to him, while I imitated the scratchy whistled call of chicks in an effort to freeze him on the surface. At first, we were hopeful. The male did not shrink from the spotlight, as many loons do, and he was interested in the chick call. Alas, though, he was an unpredictable diver. He remained near the surface where Owen could track him with the spotlight, yet he swam first at — then underneath — the bow of the boat. I could not get the net in the water to catch him. After a minute or so, he vanished into the mist.

Moments later, the female wailed to our left. “Let’s go for her”, I told him, and soon after I had scooped her into the boat and — with Richard’s help — Owen had tucked her neatly into a padded, ventilated box. “Maybe the male will find the chicks”, I said hopefully. It was a reasonable expectation. We had seen the sole parent seek out the chicks many times before, once we had removed its mate from the water. And an adult swimming with its chicks is usually highly protective of them and less apt to dive. But we did not blunder into the male and chicks after that first encounter, despite 20 more minutes of puttering around in a cloud.

We gave up, motored to shore with the female, took a feather sample and blood drop, weighed her, and released her off shore. It had been a frustrating middle of the night boat ride on East Fox. We had failed to catch the bird we had targeted on the South territory. Yet we had banded four new chicks earlier in the evening — including two on socked-in East Fox Lake — and recaptured three adults. That brought our two-state tally to 40 unmarked adults newly banded, 88 chicks banded, and 27 adults recaptured. Looking back, we had quite a lot to show for our labors this July, considering that we face variable weather conditions, unpredictable study animals — and engage in an enterprise that seems to verge, at times, on outright insanity.

Pictured are Cora from the Minnesota team and Korben from the Wisconsin team.

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Twenty years ago colleagues and I published a paper showing that artificial nesting platforms increase loon’s hatching success by 70%. Others have reported similar patterns. So there is no doubt that, on average, loons that incubate their eggs on artificial nesting platforms (“ANPs”) put more chicks in the lake than do pairs using natural sites. Moreover, our paper showed that greater hatching success produced by ANPs also leads to more fledged loons.

In the last two decades, ANPs have become an enticing tool used by loon conservationists to boost loon populations. This is not surprising. ANPs have proven to be effective, and they are rather easy to make and place in the water. So conservationists can plop a mess of ANPs in the water and feel pretty confident that they have added young loons to the population. And they can make a strong case to funding agencies that their actions might help loons avoid population decline. Indeed, many millions have been/are being spent in the U.S. to float ANPs as a means to mitigate the negative effects that oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico have had on the species.

Are ANPs really just as good as natural sites at producing young loons that reach adulthood? Or are platform-raised chicks not as likely to survive to fledging age as chicks hatched as natural sites? We must remember that loons pick the location of a natural nest, whereas humans choose the site where platforms go. So it seems quite plausible that platform-raised young face hazards that natural-raised young do not.

It is only now that I have large enough samples of nests from platforms and natural sites that I can run a head-to-head comparison. Despite my 32 years of Wisconsin data, only a small proportion of loons in the Wisconsin Study Area (e.g. 15 of 90 focal pairs in 2024; 17%) nested on platforms. In Minnesota, however, almost half of all of our focal pairs use ANPs (38 of 84 territorial pairs in 2024; 45%), so our sample of platform-hatched chicks has swollen markedly since 2021.

As the graph above shows, hatchlings from platforms are lost slightly more often than are natural-hatched chicks in both states. While the pattern shows up in both Minnesota and Wisconsin, the difference is quite small and does not reach statistical significance. In other words, we have no scientific evidence that chicks hatched on platforms suffer lower survival than those hatched at natural sites. The same can be said for chick loss in Wisconsin versus Minnesota, despite what appears to be a slightly higher rate of chick loss in the North Star State.

Frankly, I am relieved! It has become almost de rigueur to place an ANP in your lake to support the loons. If, for some reason, ANPs had been producing chicks likely to perish before reaching adulthood, it would have sent shockwaves through the world of loon conservation.

I am still not a great fan of nesting platforms. Why not? Because we have learned in recent years that nest predation is not the main problem loons are facing in the Upper Midwest. Remember, nesting platforms are a one-trick pony. They increase hatching success enormously and put more chicks in the water. But if chicks cannot get enough food to survive to adulthood or reach prime condition, then all of the platforms in the world will not help them.

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I am a nervous traveller. The day before I am scheduled to leave, I start to worry what could go wrong. Could I miss my flight? What personal items will I forget to pack? Which tasks on my to-do list will I leave unfinished?

So it was two days ago as I drove from the house where I had been staying to meet up with my Minnesota field team before flying home to California. I had spent the morning collecting data on territorial loon pairs — six on Ossawinnamakee, and one each on Fawn and Pig Lake. I relish every moment spent with loons, especially when I am on my own. But anxiety about getting my field work done, entering my data, and tidying up the place before my departure gnawed at me all day.

I tried to work backwards. Arrive at Brainerd Airport at 5:15, so leave from storage box at 4:30. Be at storage box by 4:00 to pack up canoes and check banding supplies for next month. Arrive at tech’s lodging by 2:30 to review field procedures and check in before my trip. Finish entering data in online database by 1:30. Tidy up lodging by 1pm. Leave my last study lake by noon.

When I set off to visit my techs on Ossie, I was still on schedule. As I began to round the hairpin curve on County Road 39 next to the Ossie boat landing, I thought: I just might make my flight. In a brain-staggering moment, though, I spotted an adult loon sitting on the shoulder on the east side of the highway displaying a clear intention to cross. “Oh no!”, I screamed, as I pulled to the side of the road and flicked on my emergency flashers. I ran across the highway and placed myself in the middle of the northbound lane, intending to block any traffic from passing close to the loon. As I crept cautiously toward this adult, I noticed two newly-hatched chicks huddling against it, trying to shield themselves from my view. “Oh no!”, I repeated.

Despite my shock at the loons’ predicament, I understood immediately what was happening. Six hours earlier Keith and Dawn Kellen had given me a tour of the six breeding pairs on Ossie. The Ossie-Muskie Bay pair had stumped us all spring. The Kellens had seen them together early in the year, had seen only one out on the water on multiple occasions thereafter, and yet neither they in their pontoon nor my team in our canoe could find a nest in the far east bay of the lake, adjacent to County 39. The pair had simply vanished. The sudden appearance of an adult and two small chicks told me that they had not nested on Ossie, where we had been looking for them, but on Rat Lake,

Location on County Road 39 where I found the adult male and two small chicks.

across the highway from Ossie’s eastern end. Thus, the Muskie Bay pair was in the awkward situation of seeking to nest on one lake and raise their chicks on another. That ambitious plan set them up for a difficult land crossing.

I had stumbled upon the loon family at the most dangerous point of their overland journey. The adult wailed and tremoloed as I stood in the highway 30 feet away. A southbound car and truck slowed down to rubberneck but continued by despite my frantic waving for help. My mind raced. I could not handle all three loons. If I picked up the adult, its flailing might injure the tiny chicks. Furthermore, the chicks might decide to strike out on their own across the road without their parent to guard them. I was not sure that I could discourage them from putting themselves in harm’s way while holding the adult.

Knowing that the field techs were a few minutes away, I pulled out my phone. “Call Owen”, I demanded of Siri. Owen answered in his calm baritone. But I screeched, “Drop everything and come to the Ossie boat landing. There is a loon here in the road, and I need your help!”. “On my way”, he responded.

While I waited for Owen, more southbound vehicles came by, each carrying a driver wearing a puzzled expression. But no one stopped. As I was debating the odds of getting help from a stranger, the panicked adult abruptly turned, lined himself up with the roadway, and began to run down the highway with wings flapping, leaving his chicks with me. I watched and listened in horror as his feet repeatedly thwacked against the hard pavement during this takeoff attempt and was relieved when he aborted it and skidded to a stop about 40 yards away in the southbound lane.

At that desperate moment, Mitch Carlson arrived in his pickup with his friend, Leo, and stopped in front of the grounded adult. Sensing that the window to save the loon family was closing, I scooped up the tiny chicks and marched hastily in Mitch’s direction (see photo below). He opened his door and looked at me questioningly. “Can you take the chicks?” I asked. “Okay”, he replied quickly, sensing my urgency and smoothly accepting them. He volunteered, “My wife raises chickens!”. I turned my attention to the adult in the road.

After his aborted takeoff attempt, the male loon sits in the southbound lane of County 39 while I approach carrying his chicks. Photo by Mindy Schenck.

Quick, decisive action yields the best results when capturing animals, I have found. When I drew close enough, I lunged at the rearing adult and managed to grasp it. I then folded its wings against its body, held it to my side, and did my best to fend off its bill. Meanwhile, Owen had arrived. I struggled towards the boat landing with him guiding me. Mitch followed with the chicks, while Leo walked alongside, gawking and snapping photos.

The chicks were so small that I was afraid the adult might leave them behind in its haste to put distance between us and himself after release. So I asked Mitch to let the chicks go, waited a moment, and gently

Mitch holds the two newly-hatched chicks moments before we release them at the Ossie boat landing. Photo by Leo Carner.

lowered the adult — which felt like a male based on size and ornery demeanor — into the water at the end of the boat landing. Fortunately, he dove, surfaced quickly, spotted the chicks, and promptly resumed his parenting responsibilities. It was an ample reward for Mitch and me to see them all together so quickly again in the middle of the lake.

The male and chicks reunited quickly after we let them go off of the Ossie boat landing. Photo by Leo Carner.

I will always be a nervous traveler. I do not think one outgrows that. And I need to put a schedule together to convince myself that I can meet a deadline. But perhaps on my next trip I will remember to include 30 minutes of wiggle room for unforeseen events.