loon team

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I awaken bleary-eyed after two hours of deep sleep and three hours of tossing and turning. It is time to get up, grab a banana and coffee, choke down my usual peanut butter sandwich, and face the day. I wrap a flannel shirt around my waist — smiling as I recall how my daughter would tsk-tsk at the sight of me — and walk unsteadily down from my fleabag motel in Breezy Point to the convenience store/gas station at the highway intersection where I eat my meals. My whole body aches from lifting and carrying two motorboats in and out of small lakes. My knees are skinned and bruised from squatting for hours on metal boat seats. My hands bear dozens of small nicks and cuts — this one from the Nelson Lake female, this one from the Pelican-Breezy Point chick, this one from nipping myself with needle-nose pliers when closing a steel band on the Star Lake male. My nails are thickly encrusted with the plastic glue we use to seal the bands.

Exhausted and beaten up as I am, I become obsessed with not making a mistake on my trip home. “Don’t forget the blood drops and feather samples. Don’t forget to return the motel room key. Don’t run into a curb and damage the rental car. Don’t leave your laptop in the trunk at the Brainerd Airport. Don’t lose your boarding pass. Don’t forget to text Linda and ask if she can help Molly stow the Loonmobile in Wisconsin.”

I make it to the Brainerd Airport. The Delta ticket agent kindly and somewhat inexplicably checks both of my bulky suitcases for free (!). My Pre-Check status does not show on the boarding passes he prints out for me, though, so I am forced to wait in the security line as passenger after passenger is guided through ahead of me. But at last I am in my seat on the plane. The hardest part of this travel day is over.

At brief moments, I reflect on the past three weeks of loon capture. While most teams have fixed roles for each team member — e.g. Martha runs the motorboat, Steve spotlights the loons, Kevin handles the netting, Emma prepares the bands and data sheet on shore — we use a “musical chairs” model, so that each intern gets a chance to play each role. (The exception is netting, which is tricky to learn and which would cost us many captures during the learning process.) Because of our quirky approach, I as netter am working with a different spot-lighter and different motorboat operator on each lake. This means that I am constantly coaching, constantly adjusting to different spotlighting and boating styles, and all the while just hoping to catch the birds. “Keep the light right in his eyes!”, I whisper. “Lean way forward so that you don’t spotlight the bow!” “Angle the light higher on the water so we can see the loon if it surfaces at a distance!” “Quickly and broadly”, I bleat, after a loon dives right next to the boat, because such a bird could resurface in any direction but will likely be close at hand and easy to see when it does so. “Stay on him!” I cry, helpfully, when a chick dives and swims away but remains within a foot of the surface so that we can track it and pounce when it comes up. Our odds of capture seem long for each loon we spot. Yet somehow, despite our inefficient and high-stress rotation of roles, we manage to catch most of the loons we find. The interns, I learn again this year, pick up each role quickly. They and I are pleased by their rapid improvement. I hope they forgive my occasional impatience during the hunt for each loon. I tell them, “Great work, everybody!” and give an occasional fist bump, when we net a particularly evasive individual. Considering the steep learning curve, they do an amazing job.

In fact, capture went well in both Wisconsin and Minnesota. In large part because of the generous help of Kevin Kenow and his USGS banding crew that spent six nights out, we caught and banded more loons in 2022 than we have in any other year: 94 individuals in Wisconsin and 95 in Minnesota. (Kudos and thanks also to Mike of the National Loon Center and Terri and Richard, NLC volunteers.) We collected crucial mass data from our loons in both states. Comparison of these masses with past years — and with water clarity data from Landsat satellites — might be enough to tell us if Minnesota loons, like Wisconsin loons, have suffered weight losses over the past quarter century owing to declines in lake clarity related to increased rainfall.

We have now caught enough loons in north-central Minnesota that our Minnesota Study Area has taken shape. It includes Nisswa and Pequot Lakes to the southwest, the Whitefish Chain to the north, extends in a northeasterly direction to Outing and Emily, and ends at about the hamlet of Mission to the southeast. In all, the new Minnesota study area comprises some 110 territories. These territories will be those we use to gauge the status of the loon population in north-central Minnesota. These territories will tell us whether Minnesota loons face the same dangers that loons in northern Wisconsin do. I have seen enough similarities between my two study areas that I am concerned. But we must wait to see what the data show.

So as I scrape glue off my nails, rub my sore knees, inspect the healing lacerations on my hands and forearms, and take deep breaths to try to clear my fuzzy brain, I smile. We did well this year. We are well on the road towards assessing the status of loons across the Upper Midwest. And I love my job.

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Sometimes during a night of capture, when we have finished color-banding a loon and are releasing it back into its territory with its family members, I say to the bird, half jokingly, “Welcome to the Loon Project”. But I mean it. Once we place colored leg bands on a loon, we start to feel a kinship with that loon and take an active interest in its well-being.

The bond we feel with each banded loon grows as team members report its trials and tribulations across many years of its life. “Red over blue-stripe on Lumen is soooo tame!”. “Omigosh, that female on Lumen was super aggressive when two intruders landed in her territory this morning”. “Red over blue-stripe really scared a kayaker that came too close to its chicks today”. “Red over blue-stripe fed its chicks 58 times during the hour I was observing the family; those chicks begged relentlessly.” “Red over blue-stripe just skulked around the southern end of the lake this morning while her mate foraged with a new unbanded female. She looked so bummed out.” “There is a new breeding female on Birch today; she is red over blue-stripe!”

Just as we mourn when a male or female is evicted from its territory by a young adult, we cheer when it bounces back and claims a new territory nearby with a new mate. If one of “our” loons should be injured by a lure or fishing line, we spring into action to save it.

Knowing and caring about our study animals makes it more enjoyable and rewarding to observe them. But the warmth and connection we feel towards our loons is really just a pleasant byproduct of a coldly pragmatic research philosophy: mark every loon you can, and track marked individuals obsessively throughout their lives.

Why are we so fixated on marking loons and studying marked individuals? Because marking and reobservation allows us to turn anecdote into science. If one watches five unmarked adult loons circling and diving together in early July on Brandy Lake, and two of the five birds yodel at each other, one might conclude that two members of the group must be males that became aggressive for some reason. If, on the other hand, the five loons are color-banded, we can begin to make inferences about behavior. We might observe that the group consists of two territorial pair members from Brandy and three intruders: a 3-year-old male floater reared on Johnson Lake, a 7-year-old male floater raised on Bullhead, and an 11-year-old female breeder from neighboring Arrowhead Lake. We might further note that the two yodelers are the 9-year-old territorial male and the Bullhead floater. And finally, we might observe that the 3-year-old and neighboring female fled from the group of 5 following the yodeling incident and flew off shortly afterwards, while the 7-year-old male engaged in many simultaneous dives with the male breeder and stayed 36 more minutes before departing from the lake.*

Of course, one visit to a breeding territory does not by itself lead to any useful scientific conclusions, even when loons are marked. But when this day’s observations are combined with those by scores of other field observers on hundreds of marked loons and thousands of early mornings, statistical patterns begin to emerge. Indeed, in a paper we just published, we document how floaters (nonbreeders too young to claim a territory) behave differently as they age, how territory owners tailor their aggressive behavior to floaters of different ages, and how loon parents optimize defense of chicks differently as they grow. So the accumulation of observations on marked, well-known loons made possible several steps forward in our understanding of territorial behavior.

Marked loon populations have value over and above the strides they help us make in understanding loon behavior. Since loon numbers have clearly declined in Wisconsin in recent years and apparently also among the less-well-known loons of Minnesota, our study animals in both states suddenly have special significance. In the coming years, we hope to use our study populations in Minnesota and Wisconsin to ascertain the causes of the declines and work with others who love loons to turn things around.

*Linda’s cool photo above is of Nelson Gould, a Chapman student, who worked with us for three years.

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I am fearful of new challenges. In 1993, when I began to study the behavioral ecology of loons on a cluster of 12 Wisconsin lakes, doubt gnawed at me. How can one carry out meaningful, publishable, scientific research, if one’s study animals are large, aquatic, diving birds that range over huge territories, dive constantly, and must be followed in boats? Would my work be severely limited in scope, like that of researchers on porpoises, whales, and sea turtles? I had no training in field techniques for study of aquatic animals, only my childhood experiences paddling canoes over vast stretches of Lake Temagami in central Ontario. But my fascination with loons — which also grew during summers on Temagami — and my sense that canoes could be an effective means of tracking them without altering their behavior pushed me forward. And so, for reasons that I do not understand, I began to treat seemingly insurmountable problems with funding, logistics, and personnel as mere nuisances. And I ignored warning signals that any reasonable young scientist would have heeded. I began to study loons.

So it was in Minnesota. Although one might surmise that beginning a field project on loons in one state would be much like doing so in another, this is not so. True: loons are loons. We see many of the same behaviors, hear the same basic calls, and witness the same sorts of human-loon interactions in Minnesota that we have seen over the past 29 years in Wisconsin. But all else is new. Starting a major field study in the Crosslake area has reminded us that we have an army of friends, lake residents, and supporters in Wisconsin. These folks have housed us, fed us, carried us around in their boats at times, and — most important — provided us with a trove of information on our study animals to supplement our field data.

And our Minnesota study lakes are far larger than those in Wisconsin. Only a masochist would attempt to study loons on the massive Whitefish Chain — where about half of our Minnesota study animals reside — by canoe. So a growing list of Minnesota friends and supporters have provided us with boats — thanks, John, Mike, Mary, Keith, and Dawn! — that permit us to cover the big water. (By the way, several others have made our work possible by providing housing — thanks, Melanie, Charlie, Mary, Jim and Jon!) In fact, we have learned that we can move about far more easily on huge lakes than on the tiny lakes where most of our Wisconsin loons live. Moreover, we can hold our position in the water more effectively and work in greater comfort on the Chain, providing winds are calm.

However, loon capture is another matter. Having caught rather few loons on huge lakes in Wisconsin, I was concerned that my team would waste many hours each night scanning the dark water before our spotlight came to rest upon a tiny light smudge that would become, on approach, a loon parent and a chick that we could capture. In truth, we do spend somewhat more time searching for Minnesota loon pairs that we are accustomed to. Furthermore, locating loon families acoustically is more difficult in Minnesota, because Minnesota loons seem less vocal at night than their small-lake brethren in Wisconsin. But once located, loons in Crow Wing County have proved easier to capture. So my irrational fear that loon capture would be slower and more difficult in our new western study area was unfounded.

What progress have we made in Minnesota so far? Despite the ill-timed failure of an outboard motor that forced us to cut short our night and limp back to our boat landing using only a single canoe paddle and three tote box lids, we have marked 37

adults and chicks in four nights. We banded sixteen loons on Ossawinamakee alone last night. In a few hours’ time, five anonymous territorial loon pairs on Ossie have become a valuable set of individuals whose behaviors, life histories, and survival rates we can track to enrich our understanding of loon breeding behavior and population dynamics. Moreover, our experience in Wisconsin tells us that the brief capture and marking process leaves little or no imprint on loon behavior. Loons caught and marked one night act the next day as if the event never happened. They display the same casual indifference towards us and other humans that they showed on the day before.

On the other hand, we ourselves are greatly changed after we capture and mark loons. Marked loons are individuals to whom we are committed forever afterwards. Yes, we get scientific data from them. But marking creates a lifetime bond between observer and loon. We know these birds. We cheer as chicks we marked return as adults to the study area and claim territories. We mourn when marked parents lose a chick or abandon a nest. And we move heaven and earth to guard these individuals and come to their rescue, if they need it. It has proved impossible to maintain pure scientific indifference to our study animals.

In short, Minnesota loons are excellent study subjects. They ignore our visits to their territories and forgive us immediately after capture and marking. My initial fears and doubts about marking and observing Minnesota loons have subsided. We can now see that we will learn an immense amount about territorial behavior, breeding ecology, and population dynamics of Minnesota loons — if we are willing to shoulder the burden of an intensive field project in a new state on these most engaging birds.

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Yes, it has come to this. Chick production of breeding pairs in northern Wisconsin has declined steadily during the past quarter-century. Black fly outbreaks have made hatching success even worse in the past five years. So we are searching desperately for a positive outcome that we can greet with a sigh of relief. And we have one: breeding success has ticked slightly upwards in 2021.

I wish I could report that breeding success has rebounded with a vengeance. After a dreadful 2020, I felt that a strong rebound might be in order. But the recovery has been modest. Looking at the numbers, only three breeding pairs in our study area had chicks as of this date in 2020. That laughably low number resulted from 97% abandonment rate of May 2020 nesting attempts owing to black flies. Meanwhile 59 pairs were incubating eggs on this date in 2020. As of August of last year, 36 pairs were rearing chicks. This amounts to about 33% chick production in 2020 (36 of 110 breeding pairs). At present, we have 24 pairs in Wisconsin raising chicks and 41 other pairs still sitting on eggs. If we use the 2020 nesting outcomes to project 2021 success, we should end up this year with roughly 46 of 110 pairs with chicks in northern Wisconsin. A 42% breeding success rate is nothing to crow about. But since I am a positive person, I will choose to focus instead on the 28% increase in chick production between last and this year!

What about Minnesota? We have only just arrived in Minnesota and have no data from 2020. So we are not able to provide a very calibrated picture of breeding success in the Crosslake area, where we are located. Furthermore, Crow Wing County, where we work, is running about a week behind Wisconsin, so our data are even more preliminary in Minnesota than in Wisconsin. Still, we can already say that 2021 was a light black fly year in north-central Minnesota, as it was in northern Wisconsin. And that is a good thing. Out of 104 territorial pairs we are currently following in the Crosslake area, Jordana and Katy reported a few days ago that 13 have chicks and 42 are on nests. We estimate that the total pairs with chicks will number about 40, by the time August rolls around. But we are still scouting many of our Minnesota lakes, so that number could grow to 50.

Scouting new lakes is a tricky business, by the way. Going onto a new lake with no information on previous loon usage or breeding success forces you to read the behavior of loons on the lake to infer if those you see are: 1) an established pair that has is not currently incubating eggs, 2) a pair that hangs out together but never breeds, 3) an unpaired young floater, or 4) the “off-nest” member of a pair, whose mate is on a nest on the lake. Katy and Jordana’s daily sleuthing has been effective so far. But sometimes you misread the signs, which, in fact, can be thrilling. No doubt a few lakes where K and J found no loon or only a skittish loner on their first visit will offer a view like that in Linda’s photo on their second.

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In many recent posts, I have emphasized a certain theme: male loons begin to die off at a rapid rate after age twenty, while females linger on. Part of the reason for this contrast is the nature of territorial contests in each sex. Territorial males fight hard in attempting to hold their breeding position on a lake and commonly die in territorial battles. With rare exceptions, territorial females survive eviction from a territory, move to an unoccupied lake nearby, and resettle on a new territory when opportunity permits.

While the escalation of male territorial battles is interesting in itself, it also impacts the composition of the breeding population. Specifically, adult male loons’ propensity to die frequently in battle skews the sex ratio towards females in the breeding population.

These excess females are “floaters” — adults capable of breeding but prevented from so doing by the lack of a mate and/or a territory. Floaters are the loons that one sees living alone on small lakes, drifting about aimlessly on large lakes, and intruding into territories from time to time to confront breeders. A large proportion of the loons that gather in flotillas of five adults or more during July and August are floaters. Floaters can be thought of as “hopeful breeders”; that is, they are always ready to settle and breed with a mate and territory, if they can find one. The excess of female floaters means that there are always far more of them looking to settle and breed than there are male floaters able to pair with them. In effect, males are snapped up by females as soon as they become available for breeding.

In May of this year, we re-encountered one of our veteran breeders, “Silver over Blue, Green over Orange” (or “S/B,G/O”), whose breeding history illustrates the striking contrast between males and females brought about by male-biased mortality. S/B,G/O was first captured and marked as an adult in 1997 on Dorothy Lake, where she raised two chicks with her mate. Her mate was evicted in 2001 and died either during eviction or shortly afterwards. But she lingered on. When an opening became available in 2002, she settled and nested with a different male on Hasbrook Lake, just a few miles to the northwest. Having failed to raise chicks on Hasbrook, S/B,G/O (now at least 14 years old) evicted the female breeder on Hodstradt in 2004, paired with a third male, a six year-old, and reared four chicks there during the next three years. She followed this young male to Horsehead Lake in 2008, when he was driven off of Hodstradt, and the pair fledged 3 more chicks over the next four years on their new lake. When the male was evicted yet again in 2013, S/B,G/O traded experience for youth and found a new six year-old male as a breeding partner. We breathed a sigh of relief when she broke up with this youngster after a year together, as he was unfortunately her son from Hodstradt! Then 23+ years old, S/B,G/O again became a floater, forced to return to the breeding grounds in 2014 and 2015 with no clear prospects for breeding.

I have become attached to the birds in the study area, so I was delighted to find S/B,G/O back at Hodstradt in May of this year with her fifth recorded mate. At 26+ years of age, she is perhaps fortunate to be paired again. Her mate this time: a four year-old hatched on Clear Lake. We observed no breeding attempt by this new pair – only a small percentage of four- year-old males that settle on territories actually nest – but it is likely they will nest in 2017.

As a human, I like to think of S/B,G/O’s life as a lesson in resilience – the dogged refusal of an animal to forsake breeding despite repeated setbacks and advancing age. But, as a behavioral ecologist, I think of this female more as a striking example of how animals adapt to maximize their breeding capacity regardless of the breeding environment they face. By the way, S/B,G/O is not the only female in our study area who has continued to breed despite frequent changes of partner. S/R,O/O, another 26+ year-old from Swamp Lake that we recaptured a few nights ago (see photo with Eric), has gone through at least 5 younger mates during her 20 years of breeding there. Clearly the pairing of tough, old females with much younger males is – as my daughter says – a thing.

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He doesn’t look it, but this male from Townline Lake, just outside of Rhinelander, is at least twenty-seven years old. He is among a dwindling few males from among those we banded in the mid 90s. This bird was banded in 1994, at which point he was certainly at least five years old, which means that he was hatched in 1989 or before. Thus, twenty-seven is a minimum estimate for his age.

The age of “Silver over Red, Orange over Green” (as I call him affectionately) is not his only remarkable attribute. What sets this individual apart from most others is his ability to hold onto his territory year after year while fledging healthy chicks. (Below, he relaxes near his mate and two strapping chicks from 2016.) A successful common loon is not only good at locating safe nest sites and defending and feeding young. A breeder that wishes to

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reproduce successfully must confront intruders that land in the territory without warning throughout the breeding period.

Intrusions are especially frequent during the chick-rearing period. A common scenario plays out as follows. Early in the morning, a male is diving for food, while his two chicks track his progress from the surface. Each time he surfaces, the chicks rush over to him, snatch food from his grasp, and nibble relentlessly at his bill, neck and chest, signaling their unquenchable appetites. On one occasion, he surfaces holding a small yellow perch, only to find five adult loons in flight above his lake. He drops the fish, gives a short barking call, and the chicks dive and head to the nearest shore. The male too dives but surfaces near the middle of the lake, drawing the now-descending intruders to himself. Three quarters of an hour later he has driven off the intruders, thanks in part to a lunge and point yodel that caused his five visitors to scatter and tremolo. Shortly afterwards his mate returns, and both parents forage for the chicks. The family suffers no further disruptions until the evening, when another group of three nonbreeders circle and land, causing yet another brief skirmish.

Considering that a large pool of territorial intruders are constantly sizing up the resident male or female of any successful territory for an eviction attempt, it seems remarkable that residents are able to hold on to their territories for even a single year. Yet Silver over Red, Orange over Green has put together a string of 23 years of straight ownership, the only blemishes a half-year in 1996 and another in 2003, when he was briefly deposed. He has fledged 20 chicks during his breeding career with four different mates. This male is not the only resident with an impressive resume. A female on nearby Langley has fledged 17 chicks on that territory since 1995, while the O’Day female has been on territory since at least 1997 and has produced at least 16 full-grown chicks during her breeding career.

But female loons are survivors. Females enjoy a high rate of survival and no detectable senescence well into their twenties. Males, on the other hand, hit the wall abruptly at age 20; almost half of all territorial males of age 20 will perish before the subsequent year. So when we see a male who defies the odds, like this one, it is worth looking closely to see if he possesses an attribute that sets him apart. As a scientist, I am loathe to draw conclusions based on a sample of one. Colleagues in my field would dismiss any such conclusions out of hand. But today Nelson, one of my Chapman research students this year, reported that Silver over Red, Orange over Green is the tamest bird we have ever measured in the study area. So let me invite ridicule by advancing a very preliminary hypothesis. Perhaps the key to lifetime productivity in a habitat rife with human recreation is picking one’s battles carefully. Maybe by ignoring the inquisitive, well-meaning primates in their watercraft, this male has been able to conserve his metabolic resources for provisioning young and driving off pesky intruders.

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The first round of censuses in the study area each year is always bittersweet. On the one hand, it is exciting to see the crop of new young adults that have settled and to wonder how well they will defend their new territories. On the other hand, some old familiar loons are missing. This year is typical in that the disappeared veterans are mostly males. Three of 12 males of 20+ years have failed to reclaim their 2015 territory; only 1 of 12 20+ females have not resettled on their territory from the year before. Thus, male senescence lives!

Among the 2016 no-shows are the Jersey City Flowage male, who bounced back from a nasty fishing entanglement in 2014, regained his territory in 2015 and hatched a chick there. Another loss is the Soo Lake male, who was among the most aggressive in our study area. I still tremble when I recall his response when we played a few loon calls in his direction in 2000. He approached my canoe to within 2 feet, sat right next to me in the stern and glowered for the better part of two minutes. A spine-tingling experience for sure!

Yet the news is not all bad. Six young ABJs (“adults banded as juveniles”) have settled in the study area, providing us with valuable data on loons whose age is known precisely. New settlers include two females hatched in Vilas County — a 9 year-old that settled on Manson and a 6 year-old now paired with the male on Harrison Flowage. New male faces belong to an 8 year-old that took over Brandy Lake (near Woodruff) and a 7 year-old that battled and evicted the 22 year-old male from Oscar Jenny. (Thanks to Jeremy, who observed this eviction in progress.)

Perhaps the most intriguing findings from the first round of lake visits by Kristin and Linda are the serendipitous ones. Kristin relocated one of our oldest males — a bird known to be 27 years of age or older. Evicted two years ago from Muskellunge Lake, this loon licked his wounds and got himself back in the game by settling on nearby Swanson Lake, which had fallen into disuse in 2015. We had not seen this bird in two years and were almost ready to give up on him. Linda found a female with even greater resiliency. This old loon produced a dozen chicks over the years as the breeder on Buck Lake from 1998 to 2009. After her eviction from Buck in 2010, she floated, found a breeding position on Hildebrand in 2012 and produced a chick there in 2013. But she was driven off of Hildebrand last year. Her response to this second setback was typical of female loons — she bided her time and claimed that territory again when the opportunity presented itself. As I confront another season of hauling canoes from lake to lake, my back begins to ache in anticipation. I hope the examples of these two dogged old codgers gives me the strength to persevere!

 

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LMG_9628 Manson Lake Male Yodeling

Loons do not settle on territories as we think they should. Traditional models in long-lived animals maintain that hopeful young individuals should be systematic in settling on territories. By current theory, a young loon should explore a certain region within proper habitat, find several territories that might be suitable for breeding, and then routinely monitor those potential breeding spots, waiting for a vacancy to occur. During this exploratory period, it is thought, the young loon gains familiarity with this small cohort of territories that will lead to a competitive advantage in territorial battles with other would-be settlers once a territorial slot opens up. The “foothold hypothesis”, as I call this model, is quite pleasing and logical. What’s more, there is evidence that many territorial animals gain territories in this manner. Loons do not.

We got another reminder of the quirky territorial settlement pattern of loons this past week, when Linda and Kristin scoured the study area and ID’d the pairs that had taken possession of the lakes we monitor. Among these settlers were many familiar faces — including a male on Townline Lake that has been in possession of the territory since 1994 and a female on West Horsehead who has bred there with a series of different males since 1995. One of the surprises was a 9 year-old female hatched on Rock Lake in Vilas County who settled on Manson, replacing a female that had bred on Manson for a dozen years. Owing to Linda’s careful observations, we know this Rock Lake female as a frequent intruder during 2014 and 2015. But she did not intrude into Manson Lake, where she eventually settled; instead she intruded repeated onto nearby Muskellunge Lake! Thus, our expectation that the Rock female was laying the groundwork for settlement on Muskellunge was not fulfilled.

There are several possible reasons why loons often do not settle on lakes that they seem to prefer. One of the most obvious is that settlement is not merely a matter of finding a desirable territory.  A loon bent on settling must also contend with the current resident on a territory where it hopes to settle. So a young nonbreeder that visits Territories A, B, and C might prefer Territory A but be prevented from settling there by a healthy and aggressive territorial resident of the same sex. In that case, the nonbreeder might end up settling on Territory B or Territory C. The Rock female is fortunate; Manson Lake, where she has settled, is one of the most productive territories in the study area. So even if she could not take possession of the territory she seemed to prefer, her future breeding prospects are bright.

You can read more about our testing of the “foothold model” for territory settlement in this blog post, which is based on a paper published in Animal Behavior. E-mail me if you would like a pdf of the paper.

The crisp photo above is by Linda Grenzer. It shows the Rock female performing a wing flap on Manson, her new breeding lake, while her mate, an 18 year-old male, yodels in the foreground.

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Several months have passed since Gabby Jukkala’s and my article was accepted for publication in the Journal of Avian Biology. We have been anxiously tapping our feet while the wheels turn and our article comes out in the journal. This has just happened. You may now view our article here.  Gabby and I are thrilled that: 1) our article has been selected as “Editor’s Choice” for this issue of the journal, 2) Linda Grenzer’s nice photo of the female on her lake with a chick from 2015 is the cover photo for the issue (and a second is featured in the blog spot), and 3) the journal has included extra information about us and our article on their website here.

I have already described the findings we report in the article, so I will not rehash those here, but do take a look at the article, which the journal is making available free of charge, since it is “Editor’s Choice”. It is a very small honor, in fact. Still, these days I am often on the Newport Pier, as that is a good local birding spot and I must prepare for the Ornithology class I am teaching this fall. Whenever a member of my study species wanders nearby, as it forages for mackerel or smelt, I find myself smiling a bit more strongly than before.