POTM...*: The Season of the Loon, Part 2

(*Photo of the Month)

Among the varied beauties of the Northwoods, including the amazing array of its flora and its fauna, and the multiplicity of its landforms, there is nothing that seems to draw out more enthusiasm by the locals than loon watching. People here are passionate about ‘their’ loons, and, here on Beatons Lake in the western U.P., Gail and I often find ourselves fervent participants in that passion.

To be sure, we count ourselves uniquely blessed that our lake association has chosen to place one of its two nest platforms in our bay, which graces us with perpetual loon activity early in the season, and then more frequent than normal activity after the typical late June or early July hatch. It is a rare year when at least one chick, if not two, isn’t successfully fledged here before our very eyes. (For an earlier blog entry in which I write more extensively about loons, click here; this entry will concentrate on some other things.)

I’ve been keeping track of our lake’s loon success for twenty years now, and we’ve had far greater fledging success since the platforms were placed than prior. What’s a nest platform? In a completely natural setting, a loon will nest onshore in as safe a place it can find; but the eggs in onshore nests are subject to radical predation by raccoons, snakes, skunks and weasels if the parent can be driven off, and the birds themselves are preyed upon by wolves, bears, coyotes and bobcats. A nest platform floats offshore, allowing much greater likelihood that eggs will be successfully hatched. There are still dangers to chicks after hatching both from above and below the water’s surface (mainly eagles and snapping turtles), but fledging success is vastly benefited by offshore nesting. Consider: in the five years I know of before the first platform was placed here in our bay, we had two successful fledgings in five seasons on our lake (average -- .4/year). In the six years that the first platform nest was placed here in our bay, eight chicks were fledged (average – 1.33/year, more than triple the success). And in the nine years that we’ve had the two platforms operative, twenty chicks have fledged (average – 2.22/year, nearly six times the success), including one season (2007) where the two nests produced three fledged loons, and two seasons (2010 and 2013) where they produced four! Nine of these twenty came from our platform and eight from the other, with three chicks successfully hatched and fledged that were born onshore (2009, somewhere on the lake, and 2014 here in our bay); in both of these onshore hatchings, the parents had been driven off after laying their first clutch.

"Consider the birds,"

Jesus said...

This year, it looks like there will be only two fledged between the two nests, so it won’t meet our nine-year average. Black flies drove both nesting pairs off both nests in late May or early June, but the pairs persisted and each laid a second clutch successfully. I am told that if a first clutch of eggs is two, and the bird must abandon them, the second clutch can only be one; the obverse holds as well – if the first clutch is one and the parents are driven off, the second clutch may be two. On our nest, one egg was first laid, the pair driven off, and then two eggs were laid on the second attempt; only one of these hatched successfully, though. (Our lake’s ‘Loon Ranger’ actually recovered the partially hatched egg after the nesting pair had left the nest for the season, displaying it at our association meeting in August.) The remaining juvenile seems healthy after these two months. On our lake’s other nest island, one egg was first laid and the nest abandoned, then two eggs laid on the second attempt, with two chicks successfully hatched, but within days one went missing to predation; the remaining juvenile also seems healthy and ready for the cold to begin. Both will have to be off the lake by freeze up in late November or December, the parents long gone before that. While it’s on my mind, a quick shout out of thanks to our Loon Ranger, B, for all her good work!

Finally, about the photos... Gail and I can get some pretty cool shots right from the comfort of one of our dock chairs. They come in awfully close when they make their fishing circuit around the bay, and it’s a more rare but very real treat to see them swimming like torpedoes under the dock, turning, as they say, on a dime, as they change directions in pursuit of a meal. If they’re floating or fishing more lazily in the middle of the bay, we can sometimes even call them in by standing on the end of the dock and jiggling our hands at arm’s length. They’re actually curious creatures and will check out a curiosity; of course, it probably also gives our neighbors something to talk about when they see us performing so. The photos here include close-ups of a lovely mature bird and of a three-month old juvenile with indistinct markings, a curious one near the dock, a parent with a chick pair in sun’s shimmer, a pass-by while floating in the canoe, and our whirligig imposter. (No, it hasn't snowed up here yet this year, though we did 

have our first frost warnings last night...)

“Consider the birds,” Jesus said (Matthew 6:26).

~~ RGM, September 11, 2015

POTM...*: The Season of the Loon

(*Photo of the Month)

Here in the U.P. we have begun to see the southern movement of Canada geese in chevron flight. Maple trees have reddened, lakewater is cooling daily, songbirds have silenced even as red squirrels have undertaken their frenzied chattering, and fresh patches of wildflowers are becoming few and far between. These to us also mean that the end of another loon season is coming on. Last month, my photo of the month featured the Colorado mule deer; I thought this time I would enjoy featuring the Michigan common loon.

The Lord did well when

he put the loon and its

music in the land.

~~Aldo Leopold

The season of the loon is one of the things many mid-northern amateur naturalists look forward to most. One of the most ancient of extant birds, and therefore frequently listed first in many ornithologies, a pair of adult loons, mated for life when possible, will often somehow show up on the water in spring within hours of ice out. Here in northern Michigan on the lake where we are blessed to own a small and rustic cabin, this can be any time between March and early May. Strengthening and cavorting for several weeks as time allows, the female will then generally lay two eggs in late May or early June (olive-colored with black flecks) and the pair share incubation for about twenty-eight days, before the fluffy chicks, buoyant as a ping-pong ball and twice the size, are hatched.

Adult with three-week-old juvenile

Nesting is the only time loons spend on land, upon which they are always completely clumsy. (In fact, a loon cannot even take flight from terra firma; if it happens to come down on a wet parking lot in the spring, thinking it a lake, it must be captured and transported to water if it is to survive.) No, it is certainly water diving for which the loon is perfectly designed. In the first days of life outside the shell the chick will ride on the back of the parent or float under the shelter of a wing, the adults providing meals of small fish, crawfish and water insects. But the young grow quickly and are soon diving on their own, though not meeting the adult success rate! Within about two months of the hatch the juveniles are full-grown, practicing take off with a long, loud flapping ‘running start’ and skimming to a halt on their stomachs, looking something like a sledding penguin in this latter regard, and sometimes crash landing in the process. Parents and offspring will also begin to separate more at this time, with the adults often beginning their migration southeast to the Atlantic or gulf coast by mid-September or early October, leaving the juveniles to develop flight skills in time to get off the water before November or December ice in, for a loon cannot take off from ice either. Typically, a loon born that season will spend three or four years in the south before beginning its own annual migration north to nest and fledge, usually (and amazingly) doing so within a mile of its birthplace.

Red-eyed, and impeccably patterned in brilliant black and white spots and lines that camouflage it against the background of moving water, the adult is a swimming and diving machine. Our binocs and camera ever at the ready, we never tire of watching them, whether diving, preening, calling, feeding, stretching, flying, or simply lounging on watertop. We especially enjoy watching the diving lessons, fishing lessons and flying lessons given by parent to young, often comical. Of particular and very rare delight are the times when we are able to watch a loon swim under our canoe or dock, speeding like a torpedo but able to turn after their quarry on a dime; son-in-law BJ is the only one in the family to have ever caught that action on film.

Two-month-old juvenile

But it is the haunting and lovely loon call that seems to define the Northwoods lake even more than the sight of the bird. These are sounds once heard never forgotten, like that of the whip-poor-will. There are four basic vocalizations – the wail, tremolo, hoot and yodel. The wail is the ubiquitous call most recognized, heard often after dark, approximated by those who can whistle through cupped hands, and used for many purposes by the animal but most often in communication with its own mate. (This is one of my favorite ringtones on my phone, assigned only to calls from my wife!) The tremolo is the call heard routinely when the bird is in flight or, if on the water, when sensing threat; and the hoot is a very quiet and gentle ‘who’ sound used for close-in communication with its family, almost as if to say “You OK? I’m good here.” The yodel is the one that freaks some people out; done only by the male as a territorial statement, it is an almost other-worldly sound, usually made also after dark, often joined in by as many other loons as can hear it; and when males yodel the females in the area often chime in with their own wails. Add to this all the bouncing echoes typical in evening stillness? What an evocative and memorable cacophony it can make at any hour of the night.

Three-month-old juvenile; note the flatter head

As with all wildlife, loons are not without their share of predators. Chief among the natural dangers while nesting are coyotes, or of raiding nests, raccoons, skunks, otters and snakes, though an adult rarely leaves its eggs unattended. Also while on the nest, the adult can in some years be so pestered by black flies or mosquitos as to be driven off the nest and give up the eggs. However, if the adult loses its first clutch, or even its first hatch, it has time to lay a second clutch and try for better success the second time around. If this must happen a third time, though, the young can be in danger of incomplete flight readiness before ice in. Dominant among the natural dangers after hatch are eagles from above (who particularly prey on the inexperienced young, the presence in flight of which will immediately evoke intense tremolos by any loon whose sharp eyesight spots it), and large fish or snapping turtles from below (also preying upon the young, grabbing a small webbed foot, pulling it down and drowning it). As a result, adult vigilance is constant, and usually effective. From the human realm, motorboats are also a tremendous danger to adult and young alike, requiring like vigilance from high-speed ‘drivers to yield to the divers.‘

In recent years, we have been fortunate with unusual success by ‘our’ loons. Very near our place and within our little bay on 330-acre Beatons Lake, Gail and I are lucky enough to have one of two island nesting platforms maintained by volunteers from our property owners’ association. Very effective in protecting a nest from at least its land predators, it is a rare year recently when this island does not see two loons successfully raised, and of course, this allows us regular visual access to the birds throughout the summer whenever we are here. Successful loon hatch is a big deal on the lake, one or two loons coming off the other platform almost every year as well. We can all get rather animated about it all, as you can probably tell, with loon progress a constant source of conversation among many of us.

There are some cool loon cams out there on the internet. If you can’t get to a northern lake next June, they are worth checking out. Try this one next year.

In God’s hand is the life

of every living thing.

~~The Bible, Job 12:10

~~RGM, September 10, 2013

P.S. Up next week? A “Blowin’ in the Wind” column that might be of particular interest to you trumpet players…