Maine Audubon offers new way to be part of Annual Loon Count

Mainers might not be thinking about summer just yet, but Common Loons will start to appear on lakes and ponds shortly after the ice melts, so Maine Audubon is already getting set for its 42nd Annual Loon Count.

Maine Audubon is adding a new twist to its Annual Loon
Count for volunteers this year. Community scientists
who volunteer to survey specified lakes will have seven
days, from July 19 to July 26 to scout out, access, and
conduct a one-hour survey of their assigned lake.
COURTESY PHOTO 

The organization has added an exciting addition to the annual count this year and is looking for volunteers.

Come spring, Common Loons will start reclaiming their territories and engaging in courtship rituals with prospective breeding partners and filling the air with their distinctive and beloved calls.

Once the breeding season is underway, thousands of volunteers will be taking to the water on July 19 across the state to count all the adult loons and chicks that they see in a designated half hour period. This long-running dataset has tracked the changes and trends in the population for more than four decades.

The valuable count information allows Maine Audubon to assess the impacts of conservation efforts over time, and to flag any significant changes in the population to aid better loon management in the future.

Last year Maine Audubon had the greatest amount of participation ever in the annual count with 1,624 volunteers surveying and counting loons on 407 different lakes in the state.

Thanks to this tremendous effort by community scientists the organization was able to estimate a Common Loon population of 3,146 adults, south of the 45th parallel. Unfortunately, there are not enough lakes surveyed north of this line to estimate the population for the entire state.

“The data volunteers collect is used to track population trends over time,” says Maine Audubon Director of Conservation Sally Stockwell. “We expect some fluctuations year to year, but the numbers indicate a healthy loon population, with a slowly increasing adult population and relatively stable chick numbers.”

Overall, Maine has the largest population of loons in the eastern United States, which makes the breeding success of loons here critical to the regional population at large.

The Common Loon in Maine faces all kinds of threats from boat strikes, nest flooding and lead tackle, to eagle predators, and despite that, with the help of an ever-growing volunteer base, the loon population remains robust.

“There are so many people looking out for loons,” says Maine Audubon Loon Count Data Coordinator Ethan Daly. “Loons are something Mainers can appreciate and unite behind. More people are educating their neighbors, more people are involved in our loon restoration program, more people are getting rid of lead tackle, and more people are considering how shoreline management can impact freshwater ecosystems.”

All these steps can help ensure that Maine lakes are clean and clear, which loons depend on to find and catch their prey. These efforts also help increase loon nesting success and survival.

This year, in a new effort to expand the reach, involve more people in the count, and gain a better understanding of where loons are and what they’re doing in the northern part of the state, Maine Audubon is introducing Extended Duration Surveys this summer.

This is a pilot program for selected remote lakes and many lakes which are often not surveyed.

Community scientists who volunteer to survey these lakes will have seven days, from July 19 to July 26, to scout out, access, and conduct a one-hour survey of their assigned lake. Many of these lakes lack boat launches or easy cartop access, and some range far from the beaten path.

These lakes will take a greater time and travel commitment than the standard loon count survey.

Volunteers may have to hike in and survey from shore, or carry a kayak or canoe in, and in some cases, it may be easiest to turn a survey into a camping trip. Many Maine lakes and ponds are only accessible through private land, so the volunteers may be asked to help in securing landowner permission to conduct a survey.

If traveling and hiking into remote lakes and ponds to find unrecorded loons sounds like an activity that you might be interested in, please contact Maine Audubon Community Science Manager Phil Keefe at pkeefe@maineaudubon.org and he can help you find a lake to survey that is of interest.

For more about the Maine Audubon Annual Loon Count, visit maineaudubon.org/looncount <