6892-R3_ML&P_LSLA_2019_WinterNewsletter

FALL LOONACY 2019

What a glorious day, as I sit gazing out over the lake at the most astoundingly vibrant colors of foliage surrounding the shoreline. Hard to keep my thoughts centered on the task at hand when there’s such beauty right in from of my eyes – but there is so much news to share, and such an eventful loon season to report on. This year celebrated the first year of LSLA’s grant funding from the Maine Community Foundation’s Cumberland County Environmental Fund to support our Little Sebago Lake Loon Monitoring Program; to study and document loon behaviors, engage citizen science participation, and implement sustainable conservation actions. The funding allowed us to contract for guidance and training with a loon conservation specialist boasting more than two decades of expertise studying loons. Over a dozen lake dwelling volunteers went through training to become Little Sebago Loon Rangers. Rangers patrolled their assigned areas throughout the nesting season and beyond, observed nesting activity, monitored nest success and failure, kept detailed documented findings which are to be shared with a national data base, and unfortunately were occasionally called upon for rescue or recovery missions. We had an incredibly active and diverse season. There were in total 12 nest attempted from which 7 chicks hatched, and 4 survived the season. This represents

the largest number of confirmed nests in the past 5 years of my recordings, but unfortunately only half of our best year’s record for chicks’ survival. Our Ranger’s surveying allowed us to detect when nests failed and re-nested, these second attempts account for 3 of the 12 nests. One chick was lost to what appeared to be a raptor attack, while 2 others passed with no visible sign of injury. Loon reproduction statistics report that 50% of eggs lain will hatch and 50% of the hatched eggs will survive beyond 8 weeks so we are just slightly deficient in hatching and pretty much right on for survival. We were able to recover 8 eggs that failed to hatch, and for most part we were also able to record what caused the failure. We were unable to account for 2 nest failures as there were no visible signs of eggs or fragments to examine. Wash out accounted for 2 nest failures (3 eggs). Washout can be caused by heavy rainfall and rising water levels or, as in the case of these two nests, more likely by boat wake washing up over the nest and causing the eggs to mire in the earth where the loon is no longer able to perform the egg turning required to allow gasses to escape and the egg to remain viable. Two nests were lost to predation; one mammalian (single egg fragmented) and one by bird of prey (2 eggs punctured). Another nest was likely abandoned due to human inhabitation as it was built right at the land side of a boat dock (what was that loon thinking). Continues on Page 15

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