Preserving Loony Tunes Bird’S Haunting Call Rallies Supporters
Geese honk, warblers warble and hawks shriek. The loon, however, has always stood out from the crowd with a haunting song that perks up ears, stops conversations, and stokes emotions anywhere the bird chooses to call.
Whether it’s a rash of laughter, a falsetto wail or a distant yodel, the loon’s repertoire has the same impact on people from coast to coast, from Anchorage to Boise, from Golden Pond to Loon Lake, Wash.
“I’m mesmerized by loons,” said Janey Youngblood, head of the Loon Lake Loon Association. “I can’t imagine a world without that sound.”
For Youngblood and a handful of other “loonatics,” the call of the loon has become a calling.
Boaters and anglers will notice flyers the group is posting at some boat launches this spring urging people to be aware of possible loon nesting areas.
The association is working with similar groups in Idaho and Montana and joining with government agencies to educate the public on living and recreating compatibly with loons.
“We’re looking out for loons, not only at Loon Lake, but at potential nesting areas throughout northeastern Washington,” said Youngblood, who has a missionary’s resolve in pursuit of a formidable conversion.
“We’re trying to get boaters and jet skiers to avoid roaring through wetland areas.”
This spring, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission added the common loon to the state’s list of sensitive species. The vote does little to protect the bird beyond alerting state agencies to its status.
Limited surveys have confirmed 20 pairs of nesting loons across Washington’s northern tier of counties. Birders in North Idaho also are finding nesting pairs.
“They seem to be trying to make a comeback in this part of the world and we’d like to get ahead of the educational curve on what they need,” said Jim McGowan, Forest Service biologist in Colville.
Some scientists consider the loon to have the most tried and true design of any bird on the planet, a body plan almost unchanged from hesperornis, an aquatic bird that existed 100 million years ago.
Most birds have hollow bones to reduce weight and facilitate flight. The loon has solid bones assembled into a fish-seeking package that dives and streaks underwater like a torpedo.
Distinctive red eyes filter yellow, orange and red light underwater to help the loon target fish. Its strong beak can easily seize and subdue a 17-inch trout.
Loons are nearly as large as Canada geese, although their rear-set legs render them awkward on land. Loons need a long, running start on the water to become airborne, but despite their weight, they are strong flyers.
Canada geese thrive from urban city parks to desert scablands. But the common loon is a unique and enduring symbol of pristine northern lakes in its summer nesting areas throughout Canada, the northern United States and southern Iceland.
Loons are reclusive and solitary. They need open water. Pairs prefer a secluded lake, bay or estuary where they can give undivided attention to their young.
Photographers Ginger Gumm and Dan Poleschook caught the infectious romance of loons five years ago during a program sponsored by the Loon Lake Loon Association.
“I grew up on the lake and was always interested in them,” said Gumm, who alternates as a photographer and a cardiac surgery nurse at Sacred Heart Hospital.
“My dad called them the checkerboard birds,” she said, referring to the cross-hatch pattern on the common loon’s summer plumage. “At some point each spring, dad would come in and announce, `The checkerboard birds are back.”’
For decades, however, the loons have not stayed long at Loon Lake. They return and they look, but by Memorial Day weekend, when boating traffic starts building toward its summer crescendo, the loons depart.
Through a stroke of fate, a pair of loons swooped into Loon Lake as the ice was receding the spring after Gumm saw the loon program. The birds cruised right in front of her lake-shore home.
“They’d always stayed far away, but this time they swam in very close and I was able to photograph them,” Gumm said. “When I got the slides back I was struck by how magnificent they are. I was hooked.”
Poleschook, who has specialized on photographing birds and polar bears, began gearing up to focus on loons at other area lakes.
“Our first attempts to shoot from a boat weren’t satisfactory,” Gumm said. “The photos weren’t sharp.”
Poleschook stabilized the boat and added special camera mounts for low-angle shots. Electric motors move the boat sideway as well as back and forth. A silent anchor system reduces disturbance to the loons.
“We got it down so we could ease in before sunrise and make photographs without affecting their normal behavior,” she said. “We became very loony after that.”
Gumm and Poleschook have devoted thousands of hours to loons, with days that begin well before daylight and end after dark. Their work has gone beyond image-making to banding and documenting the bird’s behavior.
Textbooks say loons usually return in breeding plumage to areas where they hatched after three years. But Gumm photographed a loon that returned to a northeastern Washington lake dressed to dance in its second year.
They observed loons flying with fish from one lake to another to feed their young, indicating that one lake may have all the right qualities for nesting, except an adequate supply of food.
Poleschook is on the board of the North American Loon Foundation, and the pair donate their findings to biologists and some of their photos to loon awareness.
“We may do this for the rest of our lives,” said Gumm.
Youngblood is similarly smitten with the loon’s charm.
Ideally, her association would like to install buoys at Loon Lake to thwart high-speed boating in McVay and Turtle Bays.
“Boaters need a visual reminder that wildlife requires a little more privacy,” she said. Logging and construction around wetlands should be done in winter to avoid disturbing nesting birds, she said.
The group is battling the seemingly insurmountable odds against preserving the few remaining wetland nesting areas on the lake.
Landowners currently seeking to develop 22 acres known as Anderson Meadow could degrade 45 percent of the lake’s remaining wetland area in one splash, she said.
Intervention is easier on waters surrounded by public land. The Colville National Forest installed loon nesting platforms this spring at Swan and Long lakes south of Republic. Log booms will help steer boaters from sensitive nesting areas.
Without the special boat equipment and patience of professional photographers, the best way for people to effectively observe loons is from a distance with good binoculars.
That’s how Youngblood does her loonwatching on a long motor route she regularly drives to monitor loon activity in northeastern Washington.
“When you care about loons, who counts the time,” she said. “It’s a privilege.”
Observations such as hers, combined with efforts to capture and attach leg bands to loons, is building the knowledge about the species’ movements.
Last year, two banded loons mated and hatched chicks at Lost Lake only to have their nest raided by a bald eagle. That winter, the male was found dead - identified by the leg band - farther west at Sidley Lake. The female, however, wasted no time finding another mate for her return to the lake this spring.
“If we can just show people how to avoid disturbing the loons, I know more of them will nest in this region,” Youngblood said. Her dream, of course, is to see a pair of loons nest at Loon Lake.
“We haven’t seen an established pair, just some loons that are looking,” she said. “If we can make them feel welcome, they’ll come.”
These 2 sidebars appeared with the story: 1. EVENT
Walk with the loons
Loonsday, a fun walk and fund-raiser for loon conservation projects, starts at 7 a.m. at the Old Schoolhouse in Loon Lake, Wash., on State Highway 291 just west of U.S. Highway 395. Registration: $9 for a loony T-shirt, $16 for sweatshirt. Late fee $5 after Monday. Info: 233-2222.
2. VOLUNTEERING
Loon habitat must be positively identified before it can be preserved. That’s why association member and Forest Service biologists are looking for more volunteers to help monitor loons in northeastern Washington.
Waters of particular interest include Big Meadow Lake and the Little Pend Oreille chain lakes near Colville; Pierre, Summit and Elbow lakes near Kettle Falls; Ferry, Long and Swan lakes near Republic; Bead Lake near Newport; Pend Oreille River, Boundary Reservoir, Mill Pond, Sullivan, Crescent and Nile lakes near Metaline Falls.
Volunteers should contact Chris Loggers, Colville National Forest biologist in Kettle Falls at (509) 738-7727 or by e-mail at cloggers@fs.fed.us.
At the Idaho Panhandle National Forests, contact Jenny Taylor, (208) 765-7206.