Historically the focus of our study has been on territorial behavior. We have broken down our interests into two main themes: 1) how a loon first learns about and acquires a territory, and 2) how, once settled, a loon defends its territory from other loons that wish to usurp it. In the course of answering these two broad questions, we have learned a good deal about familiarity between a loon and its breeding space, nesting behavior, and interactions between breeding loons and intruders that visit their territories — who are mostly young loons we marked as chicks.

In 2020, we began to detect a decline in our population caused by lower breeding success. Most recently, we have found that a loss of water clarity in July — the most critical month for chick-rearing — has made it more difficult for adult loons to feed their chicks. This problem has reduced survival of chicks and also damaged the long-term survival and breeding prospects of those that do survive — via the silver spoon effect.