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Despite 31 years of field research, I have seen very few dead loons. The scientist within me should know better, but I think my rather limited exposure to loon mortality has led some part of me to presume that adult loons die on migration or on the wintering grounds, not during summer months. Spring and summer, after all, are times of renewal, of bountiful food and comfortable living conditions. It seems inconceivable that loons could perish in the warm, friendly environs of the Northwoods.

But this is an anthropocentric view. While most humans that we encounter on the lakes are relaxed and smiling, loons — and all other non-human species for that matter — are in a constant struggle to ward off predators, parasites, and pathogens and keep themselves and their young alive. Loons are not on vacation from April to October; they have merely traded one set of hazards for another.

Four members of the Wisconsin loon team were reminded of the incessant fragility of loons’ lives during a visit to Katherine Lake in late May. Split into teams of two in separate canoes for training of the new field team, we first paddled to the traditional nesting site on a small island towards the southern end of the lake’s main bay. In case nesting was under way, we circled at a distance. As we completed our brief circumnavigation, our brains struggled to make sense of a visual anomaly on the west side of the island. It was Ethan who first pieced things together. “There is a dead bird,” he remarked.

After approaching to check on Ethan’s assertion, we were greeted with a macabre spectacle. Amidst a vast mound of loon feathers lay remnants of the Katherine male, a well-traveled individual with a fascinating life history. A few feet away from his carcass was a nest containing a single intact egg.

There was no need to round up the usual suspects. An eagle, it seemed, had surprised the incubating male, ended his life, and closed the curtain on Katherine’s chances for breeding success for the year. The telltale plucking of the avian carcass after the kill clinched it.

Yet this is not the end of the story. Blithely uninformed about the recent horror that had taken place on the lake, two young loons — an eight-year-old female and a seven-year-old male — had quickly paired up and made their own plans. Even as we mourned the violent passing of the old resident male, these two individuals foraged and preened calmly about the lake, apparently savoring the prize they had inherited.

Young settlers carefully choose the lake on which they wish to breed on the basis of its overall size relative to their natal lake. I was cheered to see that the new settlers on Katherine were well-suited to the vast size of their new territory. The eight-year-old female was from Two Sisters-East, a good-sized lake not far south of Katherine; the seven-year-old male was from massive Lake Tomahawk, a short distance northwards. Still, there seemed little chance that this confident new couple would attempt to nest in 2023.

When Emily sent me the photo above, I was doubly surprised. With the disturbing sight we had observed on Katherine still etched in my mind, I had crossed the lake off the list of territories where chicks might be produced. Moreover, I had never dreamed that the new pair would choose to nest on the precise spot where an eagle had ended the life of and then feasted upon the old male. From Emily’s photo, you can see vestiges of the attack. The incubating bird (the eight-year-old female in this case) sits placidly on a new set of eggs, oblivious to the smattering of her predecessor’s feathers that surround her.

There is something exhilarating about unbridled and heedless optimism. Stuck as we often are in the past and present, it is often difficult to see what good might come down the road. And I have to say that the brazen breeding attempt of the new young Katherine pair has changed my outlook. If an inexperienced loon couple can dare an eagle to attack them — and even more so if they can pull off a hatch — perhaps a breeding season that began wretchedly can end on an up note.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Loons in the Upper Midwest have just survived a worse-than-average year for black flies. “Worse-than-average” might not be the way to put it. In a reverse Lake Wobegon scenario, worse-than-average black fly years are the new normal in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Nowadays, we know black flies will be awful; we only wonder how awful.

Researchers who venture close to a loon nest abandoned to flies get a small taste of the agony these insects inflict. As if moved by a sweeping dipteran consensus, a cloud of flies buzzing about a nest — drawn by warmth, movement, and carbon dioxide— suddenly shifts its attention to approaching humans. The flies alight on your head and neck, crawl underneath your jacket, and fly errantly into your nose, ears, and mouth. The experience is unpleasant and alarming. It is difficult not to scream.

Yet the tactile and chemical cues humans produce are not satisfying to black flies. They crawl and buzz and annoy. But they do not bite us. So we cannot say that we truly know how loons feel when they are besieged by black flies — when the mouthparts of hundreds of females are inserted into their head and neck at once and departing flies are quickly replaced by new ones that have been waiting their turn to feed. And when it lasts for hours. That helpless miserable sensation is one that humans can only imagine.

Black flies swarm about the nesting platform and Ethan McKone on Blue Lake-West in the Wisconsin Study Area. May 22, 2023.

Despite the misery they cause, black flies have one great virtue. They plague incubating loons for only a few short weeks.

In the past seven to ten days, black fly numbers at loon nests have dropped substantially. You do not need me to tell you this; the loons have weighed in. Two weeks ago our marked loons in Minnesota and Wisconsin rested and foraged near their nests, gazed longingly at their nests, circled around their nests, and — on a few occasions when we ventured too close — defended their nests from us. This past week has been different; loons are ON their nests. Thus, after a stuttering start, the breeding season has begun.

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The saying “success breeds success” was not coined with loons in mind. But we humans know from experience that an initial success can increase the likelihood of a second one. Indeed, I relearn the value of accumulated experience each spring during the period when I train field observers. With no background in the technique, new observers are utterly astounded when we locate the first nest of the year. After five more nest discoveries, though, they begin to develop a “search image” for nests. It is a thrill to see them learn quickly over a period of a few days to the point where they begin to point out loon nests to me!

Loons are not complete strangers to the benefits of learning. Males often place nests in poor locations when they first attempt to nest on new territories. After a bit of blundering about and some poor decisions, males typically find a nesting spot that results in a successful hatch. Afterwards, they reuse that good spot again and again, enjoying much greater success than during their first attempts. Thus, nesting success following an initial period of failure leads to further nesting success.

The impact of a loon pair’s nesting success on territory defense is another matter. The loon territorial system differs in a crucial respect from those described in other species. In many birds, most notably colonial seabirds, young adults prospect for good breeding sites by looking to see where other adults have produced chicks. When these young seabirds settle to breed, their settlement has little or no negative impact on adults already breeding at the huge colony. Not so in loons. Young adult loons prospecting for territories use chicks they spot on a specific territory as a badge indicating quality of that territory alone. Young prospectors must battle the current residents for ownership of such high-quality territories. That is, chicks seen in one year induce prospectors to return the next seeking to evict the owner of their sex and claim the territory for themselves. So adults that produce chicks experience the joy of parenthood…..but have also placed their future territory ownership in jeopardy.

The mixed blessing brought about by successful chick-rearing is nowhere more obvious than on the Pelican Lake-Mousseau Bay territory in the Minnesota Study Area. Online observers watching via the live nest cam were treated to a lengthy battle between two adult loons a few days ago. While the battle was shocking in its brutality, it was not surprising. We have long known that the successful rearing of chicks leads to a surge in interest in the territory and, hence, the likelihood of territory loss by one or both breeders. After raising two strapping chicks last summer, the male and female of Mousseau Bay must have braced themselves for a litany of territorial intruders and challenges. Indeed, the banded 2022 male apparently lost his position this spring; last year’s marked female is now paired with an unmarked male.

And yet there is hope. Yesterday, the old female laid an egg. She and her new mate both seem anxious to sit on it. If they can weather the blitz of black flies currently dogging their incubation efforts, they stand a good chance of repeating last year’s success.

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Although it was June and Saturday, Upper Whitefish had a post-Memorial Day hangover. June 4th, 2022 was one of those rare, almost unnaturally calm days on the huge lake. It was the kind of day when canoes, kayaks, and paddleboats — which pass most of their days overturned and collecting spiders in sheds — set out across the big water with sudden purpose.

I was supposed to be training students for field data collection. Lauren, a recent arrival to Minnesota, was in the midst of learning how to spot loons, ID them from their colored leg bands, find their nests, and record data related to breeding ecology and behavior. When Lauren announced that she was uncomfortable paddling a canoe on Whitefish and wished to skip the training session, I initially glanced out at the flat lake in puzzlement. But we had hit windy and wavy conditions on Whitefish two days before, so I quickly deduced that she was uneasy about venturing out on the same body of water again so soon. “Okay”, I said, “maybe you can find a put-in for the Upper Whitefish-Steamboat loon pair.” We looked at a road map, planned Lauren’s route, and went our separate ways.

The loss of my paddling partner — and most of a day of training — was a disappointment. On the other hand, I love my occasional moments of solitude on Northwoods lakes. Setting out alone from the huge boat landing on Lower Hay Lake (which is attached to Whitefish), I visited the four loon territories on Lower Hay, untroubled by wind. Two and half hours later, I pushed through the channel that leads to Upper Whitefish. Shortly thereafter I spotted the Upper Whitefish-Steamboat pair and their platform nest. Lauren was smiling and waving from a dock not far from the platform. She had met a friendly loon-lover who invited us to launch our canoes from his dock whenever needed. (Access points for loon territories can be hard to come by; she had spent her time well!) A jovial soul, our host added wryly, “You’re lucky; you came out on one of the three calm days we get each year on this lake!”

Leaving Lauren ashore again, I set out to check more loon pairs on the main lake. At the Little Island territory, I ran across a nest with two eggs in a patch of cattails. It was attended by an unmarked loon pair.

Next I decided to circumnavigate Big Island. I found myself increasingly enchanted by the tranquility of the scene, which was undiminished by the vast expanse of water before me. I became so giddy at the spectacle that I almost stuck out my hand to high-five two complete strangers in a passing canoe. Loonwise, however, Big Island was unimpressive; I found only the usual tame pair at the southeastern end (one marked) near a recently failed nest. But I stumbled upon a real treat as I finished circling the island: three Bonaparte’s Gulls jostling for position on a narrow sandy spit.

I smiled to see that, like me, these three diminutive migrants were taking advantage of the conditions. In their case, a few invertebrates provided snacks in the shallow, gently lapping water. Apparently it is widely known that when you venture out onto the Whitefish Chain on one of the three calm days of the year, you must make the most of it.

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Linda began to worry on April 18th when “Lucy” — the female from Muskellunge Lake whom we banded last year — showed up in a patch of open water with two other loons from the neighborhood. Male loons usually arrive a few days before females. Clune, the most famous loon in our study area, resident on Muskellunge since 2008, and Lucy’s mate, should have been back. Linda’s careful records show that Clune has appeared on Muskellunge before his mate in every year during the past 10 years except 2020, when his mate showed up two days before him.

It’s funny how, even as a scientist, I became attached to Clune. I remember encountering him back on Manson Lake in 1998. As his parents fished together in one cove near the boat landing, 4-week-old Clune and his sister dove together in a nearby cove. I tried to stay in contact with adults and chicks without approaching either pair too closely, but the chicks kept surfacing near my canoe and on the opposite side from their parents. On each such occasion, I paddled rapidly away and towards the lake’s center to restore the parent-offspring sightline. But neither parents nor chicks panicked, as I did, when my canoe split them. My canoe and I inspired the same degree of alarm as boulders, piers, and patches of vegetation.

Clune was precocious. He first appeared back in the study area as a two-year-old intruder on Hancock Lake. He wandered around for the next few years, as nonterritorial adults do. In 2003, he settled on Deer Lake, only 3 miles from Manson, where he had been raised. He and his mate produced chicks in 2003, 2004, and 2005 on Deer. Two of his sons from this period have followed in his illustrious webbed footsteps: one is the long-time breeder on tiny Virgin Lake; the other has cranked out offspring since 2014 as the territorial male on Squash Lake-Southeast.

Although we did not know it at the time, Clune’s breeding success on Deer was merely a prelude. Indeed, Clune and his second mate hit a slump on Deer from 2006 to 2008, failing to hatch a single egg. And so, as loons often do in the prime of life, Clune turned his attention to nearby alternatives. Muskellunge Lake was a chick-producer during the three years of Clune’s slump. Thus, in mid-June of 2008, Clune intruded into Muskellunge, battled the male territory owner, drove him off the lake, and settled on Muskellunge with the resident female.

Yet Clune seemed ambivalent about leaving Deer, where he had produced several chicks, and occupying his valuable new territory on Muskellunge. He faced an embarrassment of riches, it seemed. For three years, Clune and his mate bounced between Deer and Muskellunge. And Clune’s breeding slump stretched to five years.

At long last in 2011, Clune and a new female (“Honey”, as Linda came to call her) reared two chicks on Muskellunge. It was no fluke. The chicks of 2011 began one of the most impressive runs of breeding success we have ever seen in northern Wisconsin. Between 2011 and 2021, Clune and Honey hatched chicks in every single year and raised 13 chicks to adulthood. (Clune added a 14th chick in 2022 with a new mate, Lucy.)

What set Clune and Honey apart from other pairs was their dogged determination as incubators. 2011, 2014, 2017, 2019, and 2020 were years during which 27% to 90% of all loon pairs in northern Wisconsin abandoned their May nests owing to severe black fly infestations. Clune and Honey sat tight throughout these dreadful years, tolerating hours of motionless incubation while flies sucked their blood at will. They did not abandon a single nest. Consider this feat for a moment. Both pair members must be committed to warm the eggs for several hours at a stretch in order for a nesting attempt to succeed. While loon pairs throughout the study area abandoned their nests and hatched few chicks for a decade, Clune and Honey thrived.

Despite his sterling breeding record, it is Clune’s affability that I will miss the most. He seemed to sense that humans in canoes and kayaks meant him no harm. Perhaps he even got to know Linda and me, since he had seen us so often throughout his life. It certainly seemed so at night when he hardly budged as we gently threw a net beneath him each year, lifted him out of the water, weighed him, and replaced his worn bands.

There is a new male on Muskellunge this year. (See Linda’s featured photo of him yodeling, above.) He is “Yellow over Copper, Red-stripe over Silver”, a 12-year-old hatched on Prairie Lake who has lived and attempted to breed on nearby Halfmoon and Clear Lakes for the past three years. Like all males on new territories, he will probably struggle on Muskellunge to find a nest site where he and his new mate can hatch eggs. Maybe Yellow over Copper will beat the odds, take advantage of the plentiful breeding habitat on the lake, and raise a chick or two in his first year. I am keeping my fingers crossed for him. He is a fairly tame loon and a vigorous defender of his new territory. I knew his parents for many years on Prairie and have a good feeling about him. But he is not Clune.

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It is easy to forget that research on the loons of Crow Wing County, Minnesota has been underway for over a decade. To be sure, this work has been spotty. From 2011 to 2014, Kevin Kenow and his USGS team placed geotags on a few dozen adults on four medium-sized lakes in the county. From 2015 through 2017, he shifted his efforts to the Whitefish Chain, where he captured 68 individuals, including 36 territorial adults.

Kevin’s goal was to determine migration and wintering routes of Minnesota loons, which he did after recovering many of the geotags placed on loons’ legs. Although his study was short-term, Kevin’s loons lived on. Each summer and fall they nested and reared young, foraged to build up their reserves for migration, staged on the Great Lakes, and made long overland flights to the Gulf of Mexico. Each spring they molted their feathers and made return trips back to the Whitefish Chain to restart the cycle.

When our Minnesota Loon Project began in 2021, we relocated many of the loons Kevin had banded 4 to 6 years before. We were quite thorough — obsessive, even — in our efforts to do so. At the time I regarded the USGS banding effort as fortunate for us, since it gave us a head start in our efforts to mark all territorial pairs on the Chain.

But Kevin’s marked loons have not merely reduced our loon marking workload. Kevin’s birds are charter members of the Minnesota Loon Project. The survival of these inaugural adults since the years Kevin’s team marked them provides our first multi-year snapshot of adult loon survival in Crow Wing County.

The data provide an unconventional snapshot. When one conducts a mark-recapture study, one normally searches diligently for all marked individuals during the years immediately after marking. This strategy produces data on annual return rate, which provides an estimate of annual survival. But we lack data on return rates from 2018, 2019, and 2020. So we must do the best we can to extract information from Kevin’s birds despite multiple years with missing data.

Fortunately, this is not rocket science. If “r” is the annual rate of return, then r2 is the probability of being on territory two years after banding, r3 is the probability of still being present three years later, and so on. Recognizing this, we can easily project how many of the 36 territorial adults that Kevin banded in 2015, 2016, and 2017 should have still been on territory in 2021. If annual rate of return were 90%, we would have expected to see 20.5 of Kevin’s loons in 2021. At 85%, the expectation is 15.1. If the annual rate of return were 80%, then we should have seen 11.0 loons. In fact, our exhaustive search turned up 13 of Kevin’s loons. So this places our rough estimate of annual loon survival for the Whitefish Chain at 82.5%.

To my knowledge, ours is is the first long-term estimate of adult loon survival from Minnesota based on a marked population. This is rather shocking; loons are well studied in the U.S., have been marked in at least ten states….and are the state bird, for goodness sake! In any event, this preliminary estimate gives us a ballpark figure for adult survival that we can compare with more robust estimates from other states.

A figure of 82.5% for Minnesota survival is lower than we would like. This long-term number based on Kevin’s birds, though, is slightly higher than the separate return rate of 51 Crow Wing County adults we banded in 2021 and looked hard for in 2022: 80%. For comparison, we have robust estimates of survival from a study done 15 years ago that included data from New England (88%; data from 1994-2001) and Wisconsin (87%; data from 1991-2001). We can also compare with longer-term survival rates from our well-known Wisconsin Study Area, which, again, were 86 to 87% for both males and females. In short, early data from the Minnesota Study Area indicate a percentage of adult survival in the low 80s, which is below the rates in the upper 80s we have grown accustomed to seeing in Wisconsin and New England.

The data from Minnesota so far only provide a glimmer about the loon population in Crow Wing County. However, these low survival estimates do bring to mind a worrisome downward trend in loon numbers for the region that can be seen in the 2021 Minnesota Loon Monitoring Report. But, really, it is early days. We need more data. Furthermore, the status of a loon population is not dependent upon adult survival alone. Low adult survival can be offset by a high reproductive rate. So we will have to spend at least two more years tracking return rates of marked loons and measuring breeding success before we can pull them together into a model that will tell us (preliminarily) how Crow Wing loons are doing. Still, if I am being honest, I wish the survival numbers were a bit higher.

Thanks to Katy Dahl, who photographed the Cross Lake-Arrowhead Point loon pair after we banded them in 2021. The male in the foreground with his bands out of water was spotted a few days ago just north of Minneapolis.

If, like us, you are concerned about the persistence of loons in Minnesota, consider a donation to support our field efforts. We run a lean program. Funds donated to the Loon Project do not pay overhead, administrative costs, or salaries for staff or senior personnel. They pay only field costs like: 1) stipends to keep student field workers alive, 2) travel costs to, from, and within our study areas, and 3) supply costs such as for colored leg bands and canoe paddles. Thanks!

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A week or so ago I gave a talk to the Northeast Loon Study Working Group. Inauspiciously-named and -initialled, NELSWG comprises loon conservationists from New England, the Upper Midwest, and a smattering of other regions within the loon’s breeding range. At present, NELSWG is the only group that attempts to pull together data on loon populations and brainstorm strategies for protecting the species. During my talk I shared our data showing that masses of adult loons and chicks decline as water clarity declines. I then updated the group on my analysis of male and female traits that lead to breeding success of pairs.

Impact of male (blue) or female (red) pair member on a pair’s hatching success. Both males and females are a drag on hatching success in their initial year on a territory. Females have a slight positive impact thereafter. Male experience on a territory continues to improve hatching success even after 10 years.

To remind you, a male’s knowledge of the territory makes a huge impact on the breeding success of a pair. Since males choose the nest location, males are a drag on nesting success in their first few years on a territory because they place the nest in lots of dangerous places. (Note the low blue bars for years 0 to 3 above.) On the other hand, males that have been on a territory for seven or more years are a boon to pair nesting success, because they have learned the safest spots to place nests. (Note the blue bars from 8 to 20 years on territory.) Females have an impact too. In their first year on a territory, females cause low hatching success for their pair. In later years, female territory experience boosts hatching success slightly.

It is almost more interesting to see the factors that do not affect breeding success. A male’s age does not affect his pair’s ability to fledge chicks at all. At first glance, this seems confusing. How can the male’s age have no positive impact on breeding success of a pair, when a male’s breeding experience on a territory is hugely important? The answer relates to cause. It is true that old males tend to have very high breeding success, but this is not because of their age but because, in most cases, they have been on a territory for many years. We know that age itself is not causing high breeding success because old males that nest on new territories have no greater breeding success than young males on new territories. It is familiarity with the territory and not age that is the salient factor.

Female age has only a weak negative impact on breeding success. In other words, older females lose chicks at a slightly higher rate than young females. This pattern is a bit difficult to make sense of, because the effect is so steady and gradual. Why would a 15-year-old female lose chicks at a higher rate than a 10-year-old female parent? Both females are in the prime of life, in the loon sense.

Effect of female age on a pair’s fledging success. Females cause a gradual decline in fledging success as they grow older.

To the listeners at NELSWG, though, the pattern that was most remarkable was the lack of a strong effect of mate familiarity. While pairs that know each other nest a few days earlier than pairs that are in their first year together, the pattern is weak (see below). Furthermore, the slightly earlier hatch date among pairs that know each other does not translate into a detectable advantage in overall breeding success. In short, pairs benefit only slightly from knowing their mate well.

Effect of pair-bond duration on hatching date. Pairs in their first year together nest later, on average, than pairs that have been together for at least one year.

How can this be? How can a male and female remain together year after year, raise young cooperatively — and still not benefit from this lengthy association? That was the question asked by Lee Attix at the NELSWG meeting. I don’t have a good answer for Lee. As a male in a 38-year relationship who has raised young cooperatively, I am well aware of the benefits that a long-term partnership can bring in the human species. But loons are different.

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I should have known all along. I should have known last May, when the ancient outboard motor we had just bought to cover the Whitefish Chain spewed a foul rainbow sheen onto the water’s surface and belched a caustic purple cloud that momentarily blinded us. I should have known as I filled huge tanks of gasoline at the Holiday convenience store in Crosslake, hefted them down to the dock, and hooked them up to the belching motor. I should have balked at the absurdity of using a filthy, fossil-fuel-guzzling outboard to study an animal that requires clean air and water.

Instead, I shrugged. “This is how people get around in the Northwoods”, I thought. “This is inevitable. This is the environmental cost of studying loons on big lakes.”

In my own defense, my understanding of proper boating practices became ingrained during my childhood. Back then, when we needed to provision our cottage on an island on 40-mile-long Lake Temagami in central Ontario, we took our little 2-stroke outboard over to the Ojibway Store on Devil’s Island. I still recall taking in the pleasing aroma of balsam fir mingled with mixed gasoline as we listened to the soft lapping of waves against the store’s dock. At the time, my major concern was whether Mom would treat us to Burnt Almond bars when she had finished ordering our groceries. Gasoline was just an innocuous part of the landscape we inhabited.

Indeed, to folks of my generation and generations adjacent, the angry whine of an outboard motor, the slap of a stiff wind in our faces, and the sight of parting, churning waters behind us seem inextricably linked to the pungent smell of gasoline.

But it need not be so. There is a growing market for electric outboards (and inboards) that can replace gasoline motors smoothly and are far cleaner (of course), quieter, and — according to what experts say — very reliable and low-maintenance. I have been researching this.

Why have I experienced this sudden desire to go electric on the water? Two reasons. First, the last two Wisconsin field teams and I faced an absolute nightmare every time we tried to start up our vintage 9-horsepower Evinrude. I did not collect data on our efforts, but I believe we averaged 43 almost-shoulder-dislocating tugs of the starter cord per lake to get that dirty old 2-stroke started. I have had it! (I believe Sarah ’22, Molly, Claudia, Chris, Tia, Bailee, and Sarah ’21 will applaud this move.)

Second, I can no longer deny the obvious. The relentless march of climate change has begun to hurt loons in the Upper Midwest. We can see it in the increase in the May black fly population, which forces loon pairs to suffer horribly as they to incubate their eggs, often to the point of abandonment. And it is even more evident in the sharp decline in July water clarity during the past quarter century (see below) — a decline that impairs loon parents’ ability to find food to feed their chicks. Both increased black flies and decreased water clarity, we now know, come about in large part because today’s warmer, rainier summers produce more flowing water that: 1) supports increased black fly reproduction and 2) washes more matter into lakes that reduces clarity.

So I have finally figured something out that I should have guessed before. Climate change is hurting loon populations in the Upper Midwest in multiple, measurable ways. Cutting back on fossil fuel usage where I can will help slow this damaging pattern. And that is a step in the right direction.