Midnight Banders

By Renata Harrison

Researchers work to place a leg band on a Common Loon that they've captured.

NPS/Renata Harrison

Headlamp beams slice through the dark, revealing a flurry of movement. The team around me moves with a quiet intensity, handing off tools like surgeons. They’ve covered the head of their subject in a white towel. One person holds the bird on their lap, stabilizing its head in the crook of their elbow. A long, needlepoint beak pokes through the cloth. The towel slips for a moment, and I see soft black nostrils open and close. The loon breathes with a soft, heavy sigh.

Growing up, I spent summers at a family cabin on a lake in eastern Ontario. Loons were a part of everyday life there–they sang us to sleep and wailed us awake. My family and I even held competitions to see who could imitate them best. When I came to Glacier to work for the Crown of the Continent Research Learning Center (CCRLC), I was glad to learn there was a citizen science project that monitored Common Loons, but I didn’t really understand why. I assumed loons were as common here as in Ontario.

It turns out that in Montana, loons are on the southern edge of a shrunken range. There are 72 pairs of breeding loons in the state, the highest number of loons west of the Mississippi. Compared to Ontario’s 97,000 breeding pairs, that number seems tiny. Although loon populations are currently stable in most of their breeding range, their future is in question. Habitat loss and human disturbance have pushed them to the northernmost parts of the country. Under a climate change scenario where the Earth’s average temperature increases 3°C by 2080, loons would likely disappear from the contiguous United States.

There are about 72 breeding pairs of Common Loons in the state of Montana.

NPS Photo

Researchers from state and federal agencies, tribes, and nonprofit groups have come together as part of the Common Loon Working Group since the early 2000s to better understand the status of Common Loons in Montana. Since there are so few breeding pairs, every bird’s life history holds precious clues. Capturing individuals and fitting them with leg bands prior to release is a way to better understand how loons are persisting.

This summer, the CCRLC’s biologist and Citizen Science Program Coordinator Jami Belt worked with partners from the Common Loon Working Group to band loons on lakes in and around the park. I was lucky enough to tag along to learn about the process and document it for our Glacier Science Video Series and a short video called Midnight Banders (below).

The loon banding process is different depending on where you are. Some lakes are easy to access by road, allowing you to use a motorboat to capture and band birds. Others, like those in the park, are highly protected, and carrying a canoe into the backcountry is the only way to catch them. What’s consistent about the process is that it’s most successful at night. Breeding loons are highly sensitive to disturbance, especially on remote lakes that don't see boats (or nighttime visitors). They’re known to flush their nests in the presence of encroaching people or boats, accidentally kicking their eggs into the water. It makes sense then that loons living on a lake full of party-going fishing boats would be easier to approach than those on a small, backcountry lake in Glacier National Park.

To capture loons at night, researchers use three essential tools: a spotlight, a dip net, and their mouths. The spotlight is for locating and temporarily stunning the bird. While the bird is transfixed, another person scoops it up with the dip net. The loon is initially drawn to the boat by researchers who skillfully imitate the soft, whistle-like calls of loon chicks. Banding happens only after chicks are hatched to avoid disturbing loons on their nest sites.

Capturing loons at night in Glacier requires hiking in a canoe and waiting for night to fall.

NPS/Renata Harrison

My experience with the loon banding team spanned three (long) nights, two in the park, and one outside of Whitefish, MT. Banding in the park required hiking in gear and getting situated before nightfall. One person lugged a 50-pound car battery, used to power an electric propeller for the canoe. The rest of us took turns hoisting the canoe above our heads and carrying the rest of the equipment, including a propeller, nets, banding supplies, lifejackets, and plenty of caffeine. Once at the lake, our job was to hunker down until dark, with only the whine of mosquitoes breaking the silence.

Standing on the shore, watching and waiting, I experienced the strange thrill of being awake all night, outside. Watching the banders out on the canoe, I marveled at the fact that they were doing this for seven nights in a row, for the second time this summer. The beam of their spotlight swept across the lake, catching me mid-thought, freezing me for an instant in this strange place and time. Finally, they stopped on something. A loon floated, transfixed in the light. I heard the net go in the water. I squinted into the dark, waiting for the visual cue of a successful capture—the canoe headed back to shore—but, no such luck. For hours, this pattern continued…the soft whistling, the flashes of light, the splash and dunk of loons escaping the net yet again.

On the second night, we were determined to outsmart the loons. We left early, reaching our lake well before dark, then hiked up a steep hillside to hide ourselves out of view. We waited out the mosquitoes. We waited out the moonrise. Around 1:00 a.m., using only the red lights of our headlamps, we started creeping down the hill. Instantly, the loons began alarm calling, their cries ringing through the dark. You can probably guess how the rest of that night went.

A researcher places a leg band on a captured loon.

NPS/Katherine Barrs

Night three. I couldn’t let myself spend two nights standing in the dark, slugging coffee at 3:00 a.m., without seeing our group catch a loon. I convinced myself, “third time’s a charm,” and roused from a blurry midday sleep. This time we drove further, to an area heavily used for recreation. As the steel drums of Margaritaville serenaded us from a nearby campsite, accompanied by the cheers of a lake house party, we waited. I was astonished at how quickly the team brought in a loon after setting out. As they carried it to shore, wrapped in a white towel, they moved with a newfound urgency.

Banding is a way to individually mark birds in a way that allows visual identification from a distance. It allows researchers to look at survival, turnover of territories, and dispersal—where young loons strike out to find their own lakes. In Northwest Montana where the state’s population of breeding loons are concentrated, an average of about 40 chicks hatch each summer. In Glacier, a heavily protected, million-acre national park, only six to eight chicks make it each year. We’re counting on each of those tiny chicks to persist and carry the population forward. In addition to banding, researchers take body measurements and feather and blood samples that are used to test for mercury, an environmental pollutant that can kill loons.

Back on the shore, Jami and her colleagues crouch over the loon, intensely focused. They don’t want to handle the bird any longer than necessary. Time slows and bends as I take in the presence of this creature I thought I knew…the size of it, the incredible beauty of its feathers, its obvious strength. Its breath, rising and falling, sounds strikingly human. After the measurements and samples are completed, they release the loon carefully back into the water. It pauses, a bit stunned, then sculls out into the shadows. The team resets and readies to go out again, spurred on by success. Before the night is over, we’ll go to a second lake and capture three more birds. Tomorrow, these loon wranglers will do it all again. I’m floored by the work ethic and dedication of these biologists. I’m in awe of the loon’s tenacity; clinging to the southern edge of its range. And I know, in this moment, that I'll never again take them for granted.

Duration:

3 minutes, 35 seconds

Join us on a nighttime adventure to see how researchers capture and band Common Loons on lakes in and around the park. Since the early 2000s, researchers from the Common Loon Working Group have captured loons and fit them with identifying leg bands to better understand the status of Common Loons in Montana. Because there are so few breeding pairs in the state (about 60-70), every bird’s life history holds precious clues.