Saturday Night, July 21st, 2007
Left, Common Loon & Chick by Nina Schoch, & right, Common Loon at Dawn in Algonquin Park, by Steve Hall
Adirondack Loon, May 2020 by Steve Hall, click to enlarge
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Loons
While nothing represents the lure of the Adirondack
wilderness as dramatically as the
haunting call of the Common Loon, there's absolutely nothing common
about the Common Loon. They are very large
water birds (5-10 lbs.!), but not water fowl. Whereas loons
have solid, heavy bones
to aid in deep diving, other birds have hollow bones to
contribute the lightness which enables flying and quick takeoffs. And
yet, while loons require what looks like a running start across a a
quarter of a mile of open water to become airborne, once aloft they can
fly up to 80
mph! Powerful swimmers, with red-pigmented eyes designed for clearer
vision underwater, loons are as incredibly exotic, beautiful and
graceful in
the water, as they are comically awkward on land, flopping about so
helplessly, that
walking on land is difficult and takeoff impossible. In still another
blow to intelligent design
(unless "wild beauty" is its object), loons sometimes appear to have
been assembled from spare parts. The five
species of loon, all of which are found only in the Northern
hemisphere,
represent almost an island in evolution, for when you look around for
another family of related species, the closest you get are penguins,
albatrosses and shearwaters. Yes, loons are not only a highly
specialized, 50 million year-old family of birds, they are uniquely
different. |
Click on Photos to Enlarge
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Adirondack
Loon Conservation Program
Dr. Nina Schoch is the
Program
Coordinator for the BioDiversity
Research Institute's
Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation, an
organization "dedicated to
improving the overall health of the environment, particularly the
protection of air and water quality, through collaborative research and
education efforts focusing on the natural history of the Common Loon (Gavia
immer) and conservation issues affecting loon populations and
their aquatic habitats." In short, despite the
protestations of real effort by our special interest-beholden leaders,
the health and well-being of loons are a good indication of how well we
are truly protecting the environment in general, and the Adirondack
wilderness in particular. Pollutants such as mercury and its more
toxic form, methylmercury, are products from midwest power plants and
trash burning, delivered to the Adirondacks and northern New England by
the prevailing winds in the form of acid rain and snow. In a scary process, ominously dubbed
"biomagnification"
, loons,
being at the
top on their food chain, and feeding exclusively on similarly afflicted
fish and other
aquatic animals, suffer highly elevated levels of these toxins,
negatively impacting birth and mortality rates. |
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Recreational
Trade Offs
Recreational activities
also
affect loon survival. For example, Nina and the ACLP, educate users of
motorized watercraft, about the vulnerability of loon families to
propellar-inflicted injuries and collisions with watercraft. Fisherman
can help out, by using non-lead sinkers, which the loons tend to find
and swallow, perhaps, ironically enough, to aid in digestion by
grinding food matter in the gizzard. Overdevelopment of waterfront
properties deprives loons of suitable habitat in which to raise their
broods, and in this regard, Nina's work complements work by
organizations like the Nature Conservancy, which purchase large tracts
of wilderness, to protect them from development, and enable the
"forever wild" aspect of the Adirondacks we all love. |
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Why We Were There
Well, there is this
little Thai
restaurant... Seriously, Nina and the ACLP, work with the New York
State Department of Environmental Conservation, to track loons,
identify them through banding, and measure short and long term levels
of
mercury through blood and feather samples respectively. Enter
Barb Bave and her family, who have a cabin on secluded Garnet Lake in
Warren County in the southeast Adirondacks. Barb is an intrepet "46er",
one of those individuals who have hiked up all of the 46 Adirondacks
High Peaks over 4,000 feet. Not content with accomplishing this during
periods of temperate weather, Barb and her twin sister repeated the
feat in Winter weather conditions, making them stellar members of a
small, elite club, and possible candidates for intensive therapy. See
the Carol White book, "Women with Altitude". Anyway, The ACLP assigns
members to lakes for purposes
of building a loon census. Wendy, always casting around for another
cause, and more critters to mother, had just become involved in this
project, and promised to buy me breakfast, if I kayaked with her around
"Round Lake", in Lake Placid that very morning,
looking for evidence of loons in a stunning mountain setting. We didn't
find any loons, but we were reminded once again, why we love living
in the Adirondacks. Nina invited Wendy to the Garnet Lake event,
because of her involvement with the ACLP. |
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In the Wee Hours at Garnet Lake
Loons were known to have
been
nesting
for years on Garnet Lake. The Baves kept track of their comings and
goings with a spotter scope from the deck of their cabin, and
constructed secure nesting platforms for their use. As described by
Barb, one of these seemed so lavish and lovingly constructed, we dubbed
it the "Taj MaLoon". On Saturday night, the Baves provided their dock,
and
Nina and her group arrived with two flat-bottomed boats with small
motors, to use in locating and netting the resident loons
and their two chicks. This activity is performed in the dark, as the
loons are easier to catch when they can't see their pursuers, being
distracted by the searchlights used by the boat crews. Wendy mentioned
that locating the loons is no mean feat, as loons are "precocial"
birds. When I asked her how being good at spelling bees made them
elusive, she explained that loons leave
their nest with their chicks, right after the chicks are hatched, and I
remembered that mergansers, which roost in tree cavities, display the
same behaviour. The loons can therefore be anywhere on
the lake, as long as their aquatic food is plentiful, and disturbances
are at a
minimum. |
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The Process
After the loons are netted,
the
adults are calmed by having towels
wrapped around their heads to serve as blinders, and the birds are
firmly cradled in the arms of their captors, who persevered like Zen Masters, through the many hours required for
this task. It turned out that one of
the adults had been banded in
the past, and the hoots he traded with his mate, seemed to indicate
they knew they were not in any danger. The chicks seemed positively
trusting. Nina and her team drew blood, took a feather sample, and
performed various growth calculations with calipers. We never did get
the names of all the volunteers and DEC personnel involved in this
project, many of whom appear in these photographs, but we were
impressed with their dedication and determination to see the task
through no matter how long it took. We ended up having to
leave while they were working on the male, as it was already 12:30 AM,
we were an hour and a half from home, and Wendy had volunteered to help
out at Ironman at 8:00 AM. For more information on the ACLP, its
mission, and what we can all do to help, click on the link below. Steve
Hall |
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Loon on Taylor Pond in early August 2007
