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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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Don’t tell me it never rains in southern California. I just spent Sunday morning getting drenched while hiding under an umbrella in Huntington Beach. My task: walk a concrete flood channel — we Californians call them “rivers” — while trying to protect my binoculars from a steady downpour and identify every soggy bird I could find along the waterway. Why would I subject myself to these miserable conditions? I was a proud participant in the Coastal Orange County Christmas Bird Count. (The photos above show: 1) me with another damp colleague on the count team, and 2) a rare reward that I got after birding on the Newport Pier.)

To those unfamiliar with them, Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs) are all-day bird censuses that take place within 15-mile diameter circles. Hundreds occur each winter. Each count happens on a single day between December 15 and January 4th. The location of each 15-mile circle is fixed; that is, observers count the number of every species of bird they see or hear within exactly the same count circle each year. And observers keep close track of how many people are out watching birds, over what distance they travel, and for how long, in order to have a record of how much effort was spent on the count. 

Why go out in cold, wet weather to count birds — sacrificing time that could otherwise be spent gift shopping, visiting with family, or arranging seasonal greenery in our homes? Because CBCs have become an important tool to track bird populations. If you count birds meticulously in the same area, in the same way, and for many years running, then any differences that you detect in counts between years are likely to reflect real population differences. Christmas Bird Counts have been used to document increases and decreases in the numbers of different species of birds over time and also expansions or contractions in the species’ geographic ranges. In short, CBCs produce useful scientific information; they are not just an excuse to dodge awkward political conversations with your brother-in-law over the holidays.

Of course, birdwatchers are insatiable. CBCs are just a slightly more glamorous and rigorous version of what birders do on their own throughout the year. That is, hundreds of thousands of birdwatchers in North America cover every nook and cranny of the continent, keeping track of the date, time, and number of each bird species they identify from January 1st to December 31st.

In recent years, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology has sought to collect the information gathered by birders on their outings. No longer do most birders scribble down what they have seen in notebooks that get old and musty in a closet somewhere; they submit them to eBird, CLO’s online database. The eBird folks make the data that birders submit on their phone available to all others online and also analyze the data to infer changes in the abundance and distribution of birds. eBird has quickly become much beloved by birders as a way to keep track of and share their bird sightings. Because of eBird, we birders are no longer outright lying when we stride pompously towards the door, grasp the handle, and announce, “I am going out to do science!”

What does all of this have to do with loons? Loons appear on birder’s eBird checklists just as other birds do, of course. Because they are confined to territories, it is awkward to track loon breeding populations via eBird checklists. (Furthermore, the Breeding Bird Survey already does that.) But since birders from across the continent submit their birding results to eBird throughout the year, we can get a sense of loon population trends during winter from eBird data.

I was, of course, very excited to see the population patterns that eBird shows for loons. First, though, I wanted to see what trends showed up in eBird data from other species that popped into my head. The picture is mixed among the several land birds that I happened to check. Downy Woodpeckers, it turns out, have been increasing substantially in the past decade throughout North America. So have Red-bellied and Pileated Woodpeckers. Northern Flickers, on the other hand, have been declining across the continent since 2012. Among thrushes, Hermit Thrushes are down throughout the range; Swainson’s Thrush populations are down in the east and across the Prairie Provinces but increasing along the Pacific coast from Alaska southward to Washington state.

Looking at population trends among aquatic birds that share northern lakes with loons reveals a mostly bleak picture. Double-crested cormorants are declining almost everywhere within their range (with a few exceptions). Hooded Mergansers show declines in wintering populations along the Atlantic coast and southeastern U.S. — except along the Mississippi River, where they have increased in number. Ring-necked ducks, which we see on shallow lakes in Wisconsin and Minnesota, are down in about 85% of all winter count areas covered by eBird data, but up in the remaining 15%. Canada Geese, on the other hand, are increasing almost everywhere in the northern half of the continent (including most of Wisconsin and Minnesota), but are sharply down in northern Ontario and Manitoba.

Having convinced myself that eBird is picking up both upward and downward shifts in bird populations and also exhibiting the patterns we have seen ourselves in familiar species like Canada Geese, I turned to winter trends in common loons from 2011 to 2021. As the figure shows, almost all coastal regions from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico show a decline of between 20 and 30% for this period.* There are a few exceptions — chiefly inland reservoirs, in which perhaps 2 to 3% of all loons winter — most of which show increased numbers of loons seen in winter. (The tiny widely scattered blue dots indicating these increases represent very small populations and are hard to see in the figure.)

Trends in wintering populations of common loons from 2011 to 2021. From eBird online.

If you are seeing red after studying this map, join the club. It is not a pretty picture. Winter ranges do not map onto breeding regions cleanly, so it is a bit difficult to infer population trends in breeding areas directly with this figure. However, the fact that wintering loon populations are declining everywhere in North America — even along the Pacific coast, not shown here — suggest that common loon populations have fallen broadly.**

What about Wisconsin and Minnesota? If you have followed my blog for awhile, you probably recall that loons from both states winter primarily along the entire Gulf Coast of Florida and that the remaining 20% winter in the Atlantic from Carolinas southwards. So the entire wintering range of Upper Midwest breeders is covered with red dots indicating 10 to 40% declines over the past decade. While it is important to remember that loons from other breeding populations — notably the massive Ontario and Quebec populations — winter in these coastal regions also, this across-the-board pattern is disturbing. It is, of course, consistent with what we have documented in Wisconsin and what others have documented in Minnesota.

How do we respond to this new piece of bad news about the common loon population as a whole and in the Upper Midwest? Do we fold up our tents…throw up our hands…throw in the towel? No, indeed. We get busy. Multiple problems that loons are facing and that impact the population negatively are fixable and must be fixed. So we get back to work.

WATER CLARITY GOAL

As stated on our Current Goals page, we are currently probing the loss of water clarity that is harming loon chicks to learn precisely what is making lakes less clear by testing three main hypotheses:

  • water clarity falls after rainfall because of dissolved organic matter that washes into lakes.
  • clarity declines as a result of suspended sediments carried into lakes by rainfall.
  • the decline in clarity comes because of fertilizer, waste and other human-related substances from lakeside lawns, which spawn algal blooms.

By pinpointing what is causing the loss of water clarity, we can call attention to the problem and urge state and local agencies to take action to curb it.

WINTER OCEAN CONDITIONS GOAL

We will also continue to investigate negative impacts of Florida ocean conditions on Upper Midwest loons through statistical analysis using a large long-term dataset from Tampa Bay. If deteriorating ocean conditions during winter are driving our loon population downwards, we would like to learn that now, leaving ourselves time to identify the problem precisely and — through publicizing our findings and working with state and local water quality agencies — attempt to turn things around.   

CAN YOU HELP US?

We rely solely upon private funding to support our vital fieldwork in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Our teams — wildlife students and myself — collect data throughout the summer to address our goals. Funds never go for my salary; I am paid by Chapman. Rather, funding that we receive from you supports: 1) small monthly stipends for our student workers, 2) lodging for students and me, 3) travel costs to, from and within our study areas in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and 4) supply and equipment costs (canoes, binoculars, banding supplies, and other miscellaneous items).

Thanks for any support you can give us as we work to protect Upper Midwest loons.

DONATE TO THE LOON PROJECT

* You may look at the trends reported by eBird yourself by: 1) going to their site; 2) scrolling down and clicking on “eBird Status and Trends”, 3) entering a species name, 4) grabbing and spinning the world around to see North America, 5) clicking “Trends”, and 6) zooming in and panning, as needed, to see the region you wish to see.

** This figure suggests that loon populations are falling across the breeding range. Yet we know that there are pockets, like Vermont and perhaps other portions on New England, where loon breeding populations are either stable or up in the past decade. Therefore the falling loon numbers shown for the Northeastern Seaboard must mean that other breeding populations — perhaps the very large ones in Quebec or the Maritime provinces — are responsible for the decline.

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

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

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

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

Click HERE to go to our donate page.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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