...Weather events have conspired to endanger loons making their northward spring migrations.
According to LoonWatch Program Coordinator Erica LeMoine, the problems stem from a double whammy of a late ice-out on area lakes and streams, and late snow and ice storms.
“The loons are trying to migrate to their northern territorial lakes and they are looking for water bodies to land on,” LeMoine said. “When there is a wet parking lot or a wet paved surface, it looks a lot to them like water, and a lot of loons have been landing on these hard surfaces.”
That could spell disaster for the elegant birds, she said.
“Loons cannot take off from land. In fact, they need a quarter-mile runway to be able to achieve flight,” LeMoine said. “Ultimately, that means these loons are needing to be rescued.”
Another problem is that so many larger bodies of water remain ice-locked, forcing loons to land in small ponds where there is insufficient water to reach takeoff speed.
A loon may not be able to find an ample supply of fish on such a pond and could face starvation.
Loons have been found this year on farms, roadsides and other places where they would not normally be seen.
The last snow event in northern Wisconsin was a perfect storm for stranding loons, hitting them just as they were migrating, LeMoine said.
“Right now there is also a big bottleneck of loons,” LeMoine said. “There are 500,000-plus Canadian loons that are waiting for the ice to get off of those lakes. So there is a bottleneck not only of our Wisconsin loons, but also of Canadian loons. They are all just waiting for the water to open. This is a very unusual year; it’s a very late ice-out.”
LeMoine said the last comparable ice-out was in 1996, when the ice exited around May 6.
“We are obviously far surpassing that ice-out date,” she said, noting that last year’s record early ice-out was a good year for loons.
[although the record heat in 2012 may have contributed to the Hundreds of bird deaths, including loons, last October from botulism;
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,29447.msg376422.html#msg376422]
However, this year presents a far different picture.
“They are just struggling, waiting for the ice to go out on their lakes,” LeMoine said.
On the front lines of rescuing loons is Marge Gibson, executive director of the Raptor Education Group, Inc., a non-profit education and animal rescue organization based in Antigo.
This year Gibson and her organization have already rescued and released 51 loons that went down in various locations over northern Wisconsin, mostly during the recent snowstorm. Another six loons remain in the group’s recovery facilities.
One of the main problems was that the storm iced up loons in flight, and like an aircraft with iced wings, the birds simply fell out of the skies, said Gibson.
“It was pretty dramatic, and it doesn’t happen very often,” Gibson said.
