 That's what I was supposed to do one minute sooner, but we will be having a recording Q&A session At the end of this program So in the course of the program if you have any comments and questions Please type them into the Q&A hit the Q&A button Type them in there and we'll best do our best to get you some answers at the end of the program So without further ado here's Jim Great. Thank you, Bill. Hi everybody glad to be able to tune in tonight I'm looking forward to the opportunity to share some things. I've learned with loons over three decades of work So we're the talks gonna go around 45 minutes or so and then we'll have time for questions afterwards as we kind of go through it So I'm gonna give you just a little background on myself before I kind of dive into the talk. I First started studying loons in 1993 full-time in upper Peninsula of Michigan at Sine National Wildlife Refuge This is me releasing a bird that I caught and you might notice like two white Drops of paint at the base of the bill. I used that to distinguish males and females when I had them in the hand And was able to separate male and female roles out in the field That picture in the bottom left is 2011 where I was up on the On the North slope in the Brooks Range working with other species of loons And that was one of the highlights of my career to be up on the North slope for some time Observing caribou and Arctic Fox. And then this is me recently at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History Measuring loon skeletons. So as Bill has mentioned, I've been at this in a long time I've been very grateful for the opportunity to study loons as long as I have So this map shows you where I've done research over the last 30 years and a field season might be as short as two weeks But oftentimes they're two months four months or even six months long Most of them are supported by grants that I would have written and I would hire people to assist me or help me In working on these projects. So just briefly a couple years up in Alaska three years since the sketch one Four years in Washington State two years in Nevada two years in Southern, California Sevens field seasons off the coast of Louisiana Six in a wildlife reservoir in South Carolina Six in New England and then 12 field seasons in the Midwest and most of those have been breeding wintering and migration and I would say A big interest of mine has been wintering loons since about 2004 And we've learned quite a bit about breeding biology of loons And I felt like that was starting to get saturated And I was looking forward to learn more about loons and I thought there was an open niche in the winter So I spent quite a bit of time catching loons in the winter and studying them and I'll share some of them My findings with you today So briefly I thought like three tiered structures some real basic loon 101 being an academic I can't help myself apologize And then number two is like a loon researchers toolkit one loon biologists used to study loons How we use the corporate the technology to learn loon behavior loony ecology and then I'm briefly going to talk about loon conservation So here's our loon and we can all tell stories about loons. We're fascinated by the mega charismatic species black and white checkered back the necklace The red eye just gorgeous birds In europe, they're known as the great northern diver And they belong to a particular group called gaviiformes There's five other five species of loons that make up this group So they're diving birds. They feed on fish. They nest inland at freshwater lakes and predominantly winter in marine environments So here you can see the breeding plumage the red-throated loon It's a small loon across canada in most of europe in eurasia the pacific loon The arctic loon you can see a white flank towards the rear Of that individual and then a yellow billed loon, which is the rares And the one with this restricted geographic range So loons predominantly breeding canada canada 94 of all the breeding loons in the world breed in canada So you can make an argument loons are you know birds of canada national birds So here you can see them across canada and they dip into the lower 48 So about 2 of the population of breeding loons is in the lower 48, which of course may be one of those states And then if we're looking at the dark gray, we're looking at the winter distribution of loons And you can say they go all the way from Alaska down to the Baja Peninsula And then from the coast of Labrador and Nova Scotia around the gulf Into Mexico So they winter and over wide geographic ranges and we also see them now in freshwater reservoirs Where that little range map is in South Carolina at Tennessee So loons will migrate to the coast those in the interior might migrate 2000 miles Those along the coast might just have to migrate 200 miles And that's going to have different effects on the on the size and geographic spatial distribution of loons So here's the breeding loon and the one that's less known is a wintering loon So loons molt during late late summer early fall So they lose their necklace the white checkered back may become gray in uniform And sometimes they're mistaken for cormorants because of a similar body shape to some extent So loons feed predominantly on fish, but they will feed on invertebrates And what they're most noted for are divers. They are exceptional divers They're highly streamlined looking at this loon here underneath the water. It's feet are far back So they can rotate their legs just like we can rotate our arms in contrast to their hips So they have great flexibility and mobility in their hip hip region But they can extend that leg 270 degrees to get power on its stroke And we'll show you a picture of what that looks like here This is from the Museum of Natural History In DC and here's the loon skeleton And to be streamlined through the water just like a torpedo would be they have narrow shoulder girdles narrow hip girdles Elongated legs and of course the feet are far back So unlike penguins who use their arms for flapping right loons just use their feet for propulsion And because of that their feet are so far back their center of gravity is shifted They cannot support their weight with their legs And that's why they stumble up on to the nest and stumble across land And where they get their name clumsy from the different languages from Icelandic and Swedish languages We feel that's probably where they got their name loon from So these are some pictures of loons diving underwater and what I wanted to point out to you Is on the one the wing does not extend beyond the body So the wing is very narrow to be streamlined in the water that we wing needs to be compressed to the body If it extended beyond the body you would create eddies and whirls and would slow this the speed Create drag for example on the bird and slow it down And the other one I have a picture on the sternum or the breastplate on a loon And on a loon you'll notice the breastplate is very flat and so they have very flat chest So now this is a picture of the breastplate of a loon And what I'm showing you is the keel Where on a chicken or a turkey would be very extensive or a duck even for muscle attachment Yet on a loon is very narrow And so there's very little room for muscles to attach So consequently their chest muscles are underdeveloped compared to other birds and that has consequences So here we see a loon's surface area extending its wings its wings are long But they're narrower than predicted for their body size and that creates Low surface area compared to volume of the weight of the bird So this makes it difficult for a loon to get off the ground because its muscles are underdeveloped and the surface areas of the wings are narrow And consequently most of us recognize that loons when they take off from the water and need a running start Often one to 200 yards they point into the wind in order to help them gain lift just like a plane would for example All right, so you made it through part one part two so University of minnesota press published this book on the common loon in 1988 by judy macintyre Outstanding book I read it and just fell in love with it and really started to fall in love with loons about that time and judy's To her credit I tried to identify some research For future researchers to work on and one of them she said we really need a consistent way to band Or catch individual loons so we can identify them from each other So in this picture here we see two loons We'd love to know which one's the male which one's the female We'd love to know are they the same birds that come back each year In the lake do they move around to other parts of the lake? And it's just imagine like when we see chickadees or blue jays at our feeder We would like to know these as individuals because then you can follow their fates and you can learn so much natural history and behavioral information which leads to population information and conservation So the breakthrough really came in 1989 with Dave evers was a graduate student at western michigan university Was trying to figure out how to catch loons consistently so Judy McIntyre had did some work on that And people who are catching ducks realized if you go out at night you have a little more success than going out during the day And dave's success came through is when you had a tape recorder So he approached the loon when they had chicks when they were really small and when he when he played a tape recorder The loon turned around and came towards the boat In which case you were able to have a large salmon landing net and scoop up the bird And then once you had the bird in the hand, then you can band it and gather all kinds of useful information So this is dave taking blood and getting feathers and dave was interested in like ecotoxicology of loons So did they have mercury? Did they have lead? What was their? contaminant load And most biologists if not nearly all of them would tell you once you have a bird or a wild creature in the hand You want to gather as much information as possible from it before you release it So you want to take weights you want to take measurements Uh with this is us taking bill measurements. This is measuring surface area of the wing And then here's us putting bands on loons So every loon would get a federal band a seven-digit number which identifies where it was banded And then a color band And this was literally the major breakthrough because it allowed researchers to follow individual birds So I literally mentioned here it opened the floodgates and dave I don't know those of us that seem forest scum we think about a running fool for forest scum I hope you guys see this complimentary today was a banding fool Because dave just loved banding loons and then he taught others how to band loons Got a great team of researchers of which I was one to band loons And his work his organization about diversity research institute has banded over 5 000 loons Over these 30 years of time. So it's just been tremendous amounts of information that we've gathered on individual birds And as the bands combinations got more complicated we needed to really keep track Because a simple yellow band on a bird or green or blue So we ended up putting dots and stripes and this just shows you all the color combinations that are on loons throughout north america So our job now is to re-observe these banded birds And then this would eliminate guessing if there was the same individual in the corner of the lake The different region of the lake how far they may have migrated for example So these were some questions that we were able to answer fairly empirically Do they return to the same lake the same territory? Do they pair with the same member? Do tricks come back to the lake? They were hatched. Do they disperse if they do? How far? How old do they live and just some fundamental Knowledge that helped us understand the life history of these birds And so one of the studies I undertook was observing banded loons from sunrise to sunset year after year Logging over 5 000 hours of observation on banded loons And the one thing that I did was by putting those stripes It allowed me to identify males and females And so I didn't have to see the bands because most of us probably recognize It's pretty hard to see bands on loons and normally we'd see when they roll over And preen and show reveal their belly Then we can pick up the color bands But I wasn't able to do that and so I came up with this technique that allowed me to identify males and females So now some of the things we've learned was that they do not mate for life They probably have two or three partners during their lifetime One partnership lasted 17 years but most last about six or seven years We do know that several loons have made it past 30 years Several loons have not made it to 30 years So maybe 30 years is definitely going to be considered an old loon And it'd be interesting to see is with time a couple of these birds are still living if we go past 40 years Chicks do tend to return to the same area where they were born And then if those areas are occupied they may disperse to adjacent lakes Generally within two to three miles of the lake in which they were born Females might disperse a little further than males And then what we've done is we've recorded loons When they give out their yodel for example And we can see that they repeat the same yodel year after year And that each bird is distinctly different in very subtle ways from its neighbor And one thing that researchers have found is that if one loon lost its territory And moved to a different corner of the lake or different lake It would actually alter its tune very slightly Indicating almost like it changed its communication Now what might be surprising or potentially not depending on if you're on a lake where there's lots of loons But I have noticed increased aggression in loons over the last 30 years And I think that's mostly due to increased population more loons There's more aggression. There's more trying to stake out place in the lake for their nest to build And we do see quite a bit of chasing between resident birds and intruder birds So loons will try to come back about year four year five Access a lake a territory year six or year seven And at some point it feels it's oh, it's just like a young like an elk or a big horn sheep might And so it's going to come back to the lake and try to establish the territory it will get tested and typically those who are Defending their territory have more at stake and are really to have higher motivation to defend it from an intruder Now this is the breastplate of a loon And mark pokrus was doing necropsies of loons and he noticed he kept finding these holes In the sternum or breastplate of loons So he took the bill of a loon placed it inside and sure enough they matched perfectly So mark surmised that loons were attacking other loons And they were coming from underneath the surface so they would dive and come straight up and puncture the sternum and that's obviously a sign of overt aggression Defense of a territory for example And what was interesting is mark found that roughly half the loons had sternal punctures But was even more remarkable Was that half of the half of the females had them as well as males? And so we tend to tend to anthropomorphize male aggression with testosterone In people that maybe there's something with birds as well And yet with loons it seems like females might be just as aggressive as males So I started branching out to try to catch loons in the wintertime And the technique we used in the breeding grounds was going to help somewhat but it was going to be needing to be modified because Loons on the breeding grounds are there to defend their checks And so they remain on the surface of the water and won't even come towards the boat So if I make a chick distress call on the breeding grounds The adult's going to come towards me and it's much easier to scoop it up But on the wintering grounds, they're not defending chicks chicks and adults winter in different locations. Typically They do not associate So that's going to have its own set of challenges for me So typically you go on a bigger boat longer handled net more people And it just becomes just a little bit of a larger operation And part of it really turned into being of just a fair amount of luck Is if you approached enough loons eventually you were able to catch them, especially with the long handled net And so far we've caught over 225 loons in the winter And this is a loon that I caught with a colleague in 2004 in Morrill Bay Southern, uh, California and this bird's been re-observed through 2020 So for 17 years this bird went back to the same location in the winter So in order to study these birds in the winter wintering lakes or predominantly the ocean I really needed to use radio telemetry And so radio telemetry might cost 150 to 200 dollars for radio transmitter that you see here And then you might need a receiver and antenna which might be a thousand dollars And then you can track the loon across the ocean or this is being in South Carolina at a freshwater reservoir So this loon you can't see the antenna, but it's there There's a band on those bird as well. So we would follow these birds during the winter Some would swim several miles a day, but they would never fly And they consistently use the same area Year a year after year and oftentimes loons would go out in the ocean and forge at night in large rafts I've seen rafts to 100 to 200 loons usually smaller rafts of 30 to 60 So they feel security in numbers and they move away from the coastline to hopefully reduce predation Now all adults will undergo a complete wing molt so january through march during that three month time span It would become flightless And so like all molting birds It's somewhat energetically expensive and at this point you might anticipate loons might be vulnerable Without wings, but their natural reaction is to dive away from any kind of threat So they are relatively safe even though they're molting their wings at this time Now doing a lot of boating in the Gulf of Mexico. We did see come across large rafts of loons 30 to 60 during the day and there was one particular one that We anticipated and estimated to be over 600 individuals So this is in response to flocking schooling fish such as menhaden And the loons would hoot and call each other and create this huge swarm White brown pelicans would come in northern gannets would come in Terms would fly galls would fly and then you had this interspecies mixed association flock Diving after the fish. It was quite despicable to see So one of the stories I was going to tell you in from my book Is just I spent quite a bit of time off the coast of Louisiana And when I was out in the water, I oftentimes found a really odd Juxtaposition here's the bottom of dolphin with the wintering adult common loon And oftentimes I would see them together and you can imagine what a treat that would be And I have a a little story in the book that I'm just going to kind of Probably go through it real briefly and just read it for you But this is in january 2012 And we know loons are visual predators and the murky water in the Gulf of Mexico must have made it extremely challenging to locate prey We were in a series of channels dotted with islands when we spotted a bottlenose dolphin Any dolphin sighting makes for a great day, but this one was acting peculiar It was swimming towards shore and then would swim back to the middle of the channel and repeat the same maneuver What was it doing? We were all saying to ourselves We could see ripples of water near shore from fish racing away from the dolphin It must be pushing schooling fish to shallower water to increase its foraging odds That's it. We shouted to each other amazing Then we saw a common loon following the wake of the dolphin as it moved towards shore At first we were skeptical, but the longer we observed the more certain we were that the loon was consciously swimming Back and forth each time in the wake to get any fish the dolphin missed And so we observed this several times and just just wanted fortunate Opportunity to observe this inter species communication between a dolphin and a common loon And I had to show you a picture of a dolphin So another techniques that researchers use are these tools called geolocators It's attached just above the metal band in this picture. I don't think I've got a close above it here That allows you to download lat and long But also you can use depth pressure sensors. So when the bird is diving under water It's going to make a depth profile. How far does it dive? How long how long does it stay to surface? So the very useful tools They may cost between three and four hundred dollars just to give you an idea But you need to retrieve them So generally you need to put them on banded birds in the winter in the summer Because you're more likely to retrieve them If I put a geolocator on a wintering loon, I couldn't guarantee I was going to catch it again So this just shows you some data From the lake michigan in the fall A researcher kevin keenow put out some geolocators And just I want to show you what kevin found from some of his data So we're looking on the x-axis on the bottom from 9 a.m to 3 p.m And then on the y-axis you can see the depth below the surface in meters So starting around nine o'clock loons started making consistent dives five or ten dives all the way to like 135 to 150 feet Then they would come up on the surface for 10 15 minutes Maybe 30 minutes and they would repeat that dive cycle literally on and off for six hours So we know loons can dive up to 200 feet and I'm often asked can loons dive further than that So here's some species of penguins Which we feel loons are comparable to If you look at the weight of penguins So 454 grams is a pound. So the little penguins about two pounds Medium penguins about 10 pounds and the large ones closer to like 15 pounds If you look at the depth, it's really correlated strongly with body mass So the larger loon and in this case the larger penguin is going to dive deeper than a smaller penguin And when we look at duration of times we can see Large penguins staying underwater for eight minutes. So loons are between 4 000 and 6 000 grams So they're probably fit into that medium category So it's very likely, you know loons can dive to 300 feet We have pretty strong data to suggest at least 240 feet And I wouldn't be surprised if a loon could dive to 300 feet And we've had loons underwater for four to five minutes, which is right in that three to six minute range Now you could put a satellite transmitter on a loon And you'd have to track it. So the satellite transmitter depending on when we first purchased them Was over two thousand dollars today It's around 1500 dollars to get one satellite transmitter And then you have to fly a wildlife vet who's trained in this procedure Along with the equipment and gear and so it can't get a little pricey But the information you can glean is certainly justifiable in terms of the cost So it took a little while to figure out the best way how to do this But these are like subethnominal implants in loons But that antenna is extraordinarily soft as is those radio antenna And let's just tell you a story the very first time we tried to deploy satellite transmitters was 1998 in Walker Lake, Nevada But so Walker Lake's just a little south and east of Reno Quite a bit away from Las Vegas And what's fascinating is you most of us like this is desert country. This is Nevada It's a huge lake. Well, this is a major stopover place and Nevada Department of Fish and Wildlife recognized it And there were over a thousand loons that would stop there in the spring and return again in the fall Feeding on these native fish that were of the right size class that loons preferred So our job Dave and I were brought out there to try to catch the loons To help implant satellite transmitters to just figure out where these loons were going and where they returned So that's the best late plans of mice and men and I tell the story in the book and I'll just tell you just real briefly The rule I'll just read you just a couple lines from the book from this event that take took place Was that wildlife research involves roving parts and sometimes things do not always going according to plants. So here's an example So Dave and I were at Walker Lake teaming up with researchers Mike Yates and Mark Fuller from Boise State University Larry Neo from the Nevada Department of Wildlife and Kevin Keenow from the US Geological Survey Each team was there to do a specific job Mike and Mark from Boise State were the leaders of the project The team from Nevada had the boats the drivers and the expertise expertise to navigate Around the lake and the USGS staff were responsible for conducting surgeries and then planning the transmitters So finalized we had to settle on a week to do this We chose one week in April the third week And we were hoping everything was going to go just fine. Well, what happened is this is a high elevation lake Winds can weep through this valley very strong and the water can get very dangerous And so literally we had one or two days that we were going to be able to go out And it was forecasted the winds were going to be too high And it just turns out the satellite transmitters had not arrived on our first night So the question was do we go out at night and catch these loans and hold them And get the satellite transmitters the next day or do we wait and go out the second night? Well, the consensus was let's just see if we can catch these birds where we caught some we caught five We kept the three largest And the question is well, where were you going to put them? Well, we ended up putting them in a box padded protected And we made sure we we had to base basically we had to put them in our hotel room, right Just for overnight and then the next morning the satellite transmitters arrived We conducted the surgeries And I'll show you the results briefly from that. So here's the bird with the satellite transmitter on it So the birds flew from walker lake nevada to siscatch one and they literally made it there within a month And the story could end there, but something unusual and remarkable happened 13 years later And so i'm going to jump forward 13 years in 2011 These are some researchers that i've worked with in the past And we were going to put satellite transmitters and some loans in the gulf of mexico So we catch two birds at random we put satellite transmitters in them and we plot their journeys So this is right off the coast of louisiana and uh spend 10 days In tennessee at a reservoir. This is a male bird 15 days in lake michigan six days in lake winnipeg It flew up to northern siscatch one Stayed there two thousand for the trip of two thousand three hundred and nine miles And then we caught the other bird off the coast of louisiana It spent 20 days off the mississippi coast before it went to a reservoir in north carolina Chesapeake bay for nine days lake gary for 12 Lake huron for 10 days lake winnipeg for two or three And again went to northwest siscatch on two thousand seven hundred seventy six miles So to my knowledge, that's the longest distance we've ever recorded a loon migrate And by the way, these loons were very small So to fly from the interior here over two thousand miles their body size reflects that Loons that migrate short distances are considerably larger in size So i thought we should plot the birds at walker lake with the birds from the gulf of mexico And when you do that you can see it looks like they overlap And if we zoom in the very thin line is the bird from walker lake the thick line Is the bird from the gulf of mexico and you can see peter pond lake They overlap there And you can zoom in on this with the thick line being the louisiana tag bird and the thin line being birds from walker lake ultimately The fact that these birds ended up on the same water body And they were in two different ocean bases one went around in the pacific the other in the gulf of mexico The fact that they came together on this one lake was truly Remarkable and the odds of that were extraordinarily slim So we do know that loons in sascatchewan in the northwest corner Some of them migrate and winter off pacific ocean and some will migrate to the gulf of mexico So we did some surgeries on loons in maine with we had a little bit of money for that and We just reaffirmed where loon biologists has always thought that peer members winter in different locations So like the aziz kahas female was just south of cape cod and the aziz kahas male was up in booth bay This was the same pair that had chicks when we caught them They were on aziz kahas lake up in the range of the lakes area And this is what we've always felt that males and females of the same pair winter in different locations And you can see in this case the flax that female wintered off maryland And the male again was kind of closer to like bar harbor booth bay as well So in every instance the females migrated further than males did And this just shows you a brief picture Of the distribution of the birds from one year to the next now normally satellite transmitters last a year and then they the battery wipes out Those put on bald eagles peregrine falcons and albatrosses are solar powered so they're able to to recharge But the but the ones we put in loons that's not a possibility But what is remarkable here is the bird used the same area between years So whether it was off the coast of maryland or south of cape cod the birds were found there consistently Lastly a tool we can use as a video or camcorder right? We can set that up by a nest for example and monitor what happens during a nest So here you can see a loon getting off the nest you can see the bands on the birds And we can track if there's any predators in the area any human disturbance for example So this is a bird up in range the lake And it looks like it's fairly high above the water. It's not an island But it just turned out that a boat came by speeding created a large wake flooded the nest and the egg actually was pushed off from the nest and this bird had to re-nest Here you can see like a mink Coming out at night now minks not going to be a threat if the loon is sitting on the nest It might be a threat to the egg if the loon adult was not incubating Here's a picture of a river otter And then phyto most of us we are Listening to bill talk about trying to keep our cats at doors Well, sometimes dogs have good intentions, but they're curious. They're exploring and they can chase a loon off a nest as well And this one's just Kind of what happens when you have a camera out showing a picture of a moose And the moose is just working the shoreline coming across the loon nest And you can see the loon in return is making itself small and trying to be inobtrusive And then here you can see a sub-adult bald eagle in the background of this loon The eagle did come down and try to attack the loon the loon did get away But there was a little scuttle And again the value of using some video technology with that Okay, you made it through part two and part three is pretty short comparatively So a number of us were thinking about Is it possible to translocate loons from one place to another place? And this really came up because southern minnesota wisconsin michigan has There's been a retraction of loons in those midwestern states Unclear why that exactly is that there's probably some hunting involved human development for example shoreline encroachment And so it's fascinating. This is an exercise to think can we translocate loons from one place to another? How best would we do that? Well, we would probably take chicks that are six to eight weeks old And if we can get them to implant on this new lake They then potentially they would return there And establish a breeding pair So this was a project that I helped initiate back in 2014. I worked on this for several years We ended up translocating 20 chicks over three years 285 miles from northern minnesota to southern minnesota One of my jobs was to find release lakes or breeding lakes that still had suitable habitat that weren't over developed This is fish lake in southern minnesota You can see we ended up deciding to put a like a An enclosure We needed to put burlap and lining that enclosure as well that kept the loons calm We fed the loons. Yes, we tried to kind of hide ourselves from that report fishing to a funnel into the enclosure Which the loons ate readily and so for the most part the project went off Without too many hitches And was somewhat successful. This is the first release of a loon chick ever 15 august 2014 And one of my more Just excitable moments is the loon researcher being part of this project So part two project Dave evers continued this work in massachusetts Trying to move main chicks or chicks from new york To massachusetts to see if we can establish another Uh area where there used to have been loons historically, but we're not of recent And what dave was able to get was that some a chick that had moved from new york to pocchial pond in massachusetts in 2015 Returned there three years later in 2018 paired with a male and successfully produced a chick And so in other words it imprinted that didn't go back to new york and went back to massachusetts where it was born where where it was left And established a pair there so there's it suggests that this kind of technique can be used if it was needed as a conservation tool But really some of the more immediate aspects of loons and conservation are fluctuating water levels So due to reservoirs and depending on if we get heavy rain falls Loons can build up their nest somewhat But there's there's a limit to how much they can actually build up their nest before they're flooded And so this is a picture of an egg and a nest that's flooded and was unsuccessful And loons typically when nest right near the edge where there's very deep water so they can escape a bald eagle predation possibility for example So a number of agencies and groups Private citizen groups are trying to put out platforms to augment the loss of loons chicks or loon eggs to flooding These have been fairly or relatively successful They've been modified over the years by trying to put some Wedding over the nest And this way it kind of minimizes It's apparent openness to an eagle or like a gall or crow or even a raven for example And there's had some success And it's just we've had lots of conservation groups organizations working And we've come tremendous of ways in just two or three decades With educating people about loons needing to be low low wake zones Give the loons some space when they have chicks trying to reduce both trauma for example And we've had quite a bit of success mostly to the dedication of lots of loon biologists private citizens And we have a success story loons in new york from out new hampshire Uh are now doing very well in massachusetts because of these conservation efforts And more than ever this great communication between state agencies federal agencies county groups lake associations loon organizations And the amount of sharing of knowledge is at an all-time high And it's very exciting to be a part of that one of the things we're concerned about is emerging diseases So there's a loon that had malaria west nile virus So we're starting to see a few individuals with that. Is that going to turn it to be a larger problem? Well, we're unsure about that but we do have wildlife vets and pathologists who are on stand by investigating that So I think I got through the talk in just about the right amount of time I you know, I've been very grateful to have many people who've helped me guided me work with me for five 10 15 20 years. I feel very blessed to be with just wonderful wonderful people I also have worked with 52 biologists in the field for at least a week So all these people have dedicated their time expertise And it's been a really joy for me working out at night seeing the northern lights. For example, it's been really spectacular And I also want to thank A lot of researchers Loone researchers who I've collaborated with shared information with over the years Their dedication is tremendous And lastly, I've worked with 288 48 volunteers And most of them I want to thank them. They've worked with me like a week in the field And I'd like to thank Earthwatch Institute based in Boston that has supported lots of my research over several decades And of course, I have to thank my family because I've been gone from home and they've been very supportive of my trips So thanks for the family. Thank you for tuning in Photo credits well deserved of those good friends of mine And then here's my local website. So thanks everybody for tuning in Get a cup of water and then it will go for some questions Yep, thank you, Jim. That was wonderful We do have several questions as soon as you're ready to defend your thesis Thank you. Yeah, go for it Uh, do you have a sense of the populations the the worldwide populations of the different loon species? And how they are faring Yeah, it's actually it seems that the one that's probably most concerned Is the yellow building because of its restricted range across Eurasia like Russia and Canada and Alaska And it's because of its restricted range and potential oil development and some of these very fragile landscapes Loons have the yellow building has extraordinary sensitivity to humans So because on the landscape of the tundra in which they occupy Anything taller than two or three feet is becomes very Alerts them and of course when you see they see people across the landscape They're very alarmed by that So the other birds red-throated certain mostly fine Pacific loons as well and Arctic loons But I think they without a doubt the yellow build loons the one that's the most Needs concerned What's what's the estimate of their population? I think it's feel over a couple thousand couple thousand pairs of loons up in just in the Alaska region And on the other end how what's an estimate of the number of common loons? Yeah, so probably worldwide around 650,000 So roughly 240 or 250,000 pairs of loons Yeah, and is there a sense of how that's how they fared over the last century? Are they declining? Yeah, I think that's that's fair. I think what we found with loons is I suspect what happened is DDT took a hit on loons in this, you know, probably 40s 50s 60s I think we we see examples of of hunting Which hit Some loon numbers as well and then just the lake lake shore development had a big impact on loons So I think loons have been rebounding since that so I think loons were kind of nearing low in the 1900s 1940s 50s DDT And then what we've seen is we've seen a rebound of loons Since the 70s and 80s. We've seen more loons in New Hampshire, Vermont, for example Then we've had in the 70s 80s and 90s Okay, that's that's certainly better than some species and a lot of the smaller songbirds are considerably Threatened to a considerably greater degree We have one question about siblings Are there are there typically two eggs and two chicks or what What is the norm and how competitive are they? How cutthroat are they with each other with their siblings? Yeah, that's a great question and I talk about this a little bit in the book because I observed a Sybilicide event where the older chick picked the younger chick to death after like 18 days And other loon researchers and just other folks who've paid attention have watched Some Sybilicide that's taken place So for the most part a loon if you're going to go through the trouble of building an s You know better to lay two eggs and have some insurance with people is Inviable so loons typically will lay two eggs both will hatch But they'll hatch about a day apart and so the one chick that born first is always larger consistently What we found that during that you know four six-week period when they're developing And for some reason and it's unclear and I would say it's not due to shortage the food by any stretch or Neglection by the neglect by the parents But occasionally we will see an older sibling pack the younger sibling And not always to death, but we will see some aggression And we have seen some Sybilicide but for the most part that's uncommon And most of them will kind of be able to be supported by their parents And be able to raise two chicks. I will add this this is kind of an extension So so chicks are vulnerable definitely during the first two weeks, right? That's when their motor skills are undeveloped And up until four weeks of age around five or six weeks of age The motor skills have developed where they can dive quickly They're more alert and so if a loon chick can make it to four weeks And certainly by six weeks it's more likely to be able to fledge successfully So that's probably the tenuous time in the life of a loon chick. Is there early two to four-week period? Okay, you mentioned a number of the threats before but is uh lead From fishing gear uh Does that impact loons? Right by a leg lead poisoning. Sure, right and Lead toxicosis continues to be a concern and take a number of loons. So out of the necropsies that have been done in New Hampshire We see like 30 40 percent of the loons have died but could lead toxicosis And so to clarify just one split shot Of lead ingested by a loon and why would a loon do that? Well Loons use their gizzard to grind up fish bones, right? And so sometimes they're on the bottom of the set and picking up Uh pebbles and we're not really sure what the selection process is with that But it seems that ultimately they can pick up a split shot and that's enough to cause lead toxicosis so Several new england states right have had restrictions on on lead or size of fishing tackle And I think they have been very successful. I know out in washington state They reduced lead fishing on 13 or 14 breeding legs And over 10 years, we've seen loons have much higher mortality or much less mortality higher survivorship And it's kind of a success story. So if someone's looking for Some some evidence that Lead fishing tackle having success on loon chicks. That would be one place. I would direct them Yeah are You know in some of your shots, there were Quite a few loons gathered in On a body of water Is that seen in main at all or for further offshore? Yes, sure. I think Yeah, I think I've got the question and you can fill me in bill if I I didn't quite get it but One of the things that loons are noted for and something I studied for Four years was really intrigued by Is by mid to late summer Loons engage in what we've called social gatherings where they'll you leave their partner Swim onto the little lake other loons would join them They'll go through these very ritualized behaviors line swimming circle diving And it's really a curiosity why loons would do that like mid to late summer And they'll who they're mostly relaxed And so I was able to put some bands on loons and watch them And a number of the loons that were interacting in these social gatherings were unbanned birds So they were coming from outside the wildlife records while I was studying And I think these were birds that were like recognizing for potential territories potential mates And so I think there's some of that that takes place So on freshwater lakes Mid to late summer through the fall we tend to see that and I also think We've seen gatherings on large lakes the finger lakes in new york some big lakes here in main new hampshire squam one of us lucky and others Where loons will tend to aggregate in the fall and form fairly large flocks And might enhance their feeding success as necessary And then we do see some of that taking place in the ocean as well But a lot of oceanic birds tend to be solitary That's a long discussion as well But there are some social Aspects of loons in the winter, but many of them are solitary as well. So hopefully that answered Yep. Yes. Thank you when how when the first winter arrives for the young chicks How Do they do they migrate to the winter Saltwater areas with their parents or are they on their own? Yeah, and we were always fascinated by that because some populations of birds You know the young luna migration around from the adults, but in loons the adults leave the chicks two weeks to six weeks before The the chicks depart and so they have to figure out where to go right and so there must be some genetic predisposition in terms of orientation And probably detecting some levels of magnetic field around the earth And know somewhat to fly south southwest or south southeast There seems to be some movement And I do feel when they once they get to the ocean This is a new environment for them. And what I've noticed with Young birds that are like six seven months old As they really try to watch adults they're queuing in to like, what should I be feeding? What should I be eating? How should I be doing this? And I've almost seen the situation where adult works into a bay or a cove And then they'll did the chick or the young bird now that immature six seven months old Following the adult and learning so I think there's quite a bit of learning by observation In loons during the wintertime Well, that's that's great Uh, I pretty much covers our questions It has been an absolute pleasure to have you with us here tonight I encourage people to check out Jim's website jamesparook.com And uh, check out his book as well And thank you so much for joining us Hey, appreciate it. Thanks everybody for tuning in And we hope to see everyone next month Good night Good night