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(BIRDSONG)

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(WATER BABBLING)

(BIRD COOING)

NARRATOR: Their haunting calls stir our souls.

(HOOTING)

For millions of years, common loons have migrated

the lengths of North America.

Breeding on northern lakes each summer,

they enchant cottagers and campers with their mysterious beauty.

Lakes, rivers, they're the archetypal bird of these landscapes.

(HOOTS)

Now their numbers are plummeting.

Biologists are in a race against time to understand why.

We need to figure this out now.

We love loons and we want to keep them for forever.

Will silence fall across our lakes?

Or can we save the common loon?

Few places on earth are as peaceful

as Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park in early spring.

(SNORTING)

Its 7,800 square kilometres of boreal forest

are home to more than 200 animal species.

As soon as the ice retreats, the first loon arrives,

ending his long journey from the Gulf of Mexico.

If all goes well, he will find a mate, raise a family

and ready his chicks to fly south alone,

all before the end of autumn.

For now, his main task

is to claim his territory with a yodel...

(HARSH YODEL)

..warning other males to steer clear.

For me, hearing a loon return to its lake,

that's really the official start of spring.

When you hear that, it just sort of goes right through you.

It's a melting kind of feeling.

Doug monitors loon populations across Canada.

These days, every spring arrival is cause for celebration.

His research shows Canada's beloved bird is in trouble.

If it goes where it appears to be headed,

then we're gonna start to see fewer and fewer nesting pairs.

I think we need to really figure this out now.

So we're on the clock.

Nearly 600,000 common loons

migrate to breeding grounds in Canada and the northern US

each spring.

Ontario is the favoured destination.

More than a third of common loons breed here.

Some of the best lakes are in Algonquin Provincial Park.

(HOOTING)

Oh! There's one, way down there.

Doug has been coming here since childhood,

observing loons with his father Ron, a retired park naturalist.

Let's head out and see if we can get a closer look.

Algonquin Park is ideal for loons.

We have cold clear lakes.

This is a bird that hunts fish visually.

Murky, muddy lakes are not very suited to loons.

The total number of common loons in Algonquin Provincial Park

would be on the order of several thousand birds.

Some trickle in first, and then a few days later

the whole bunch of them come back all at once.

Here, and across Canada,

volunteers will monitor their progress all season long.

At Birds Canada, Doug and his team track loon populations

using observations from cottagers and other citizen scientists.

Today we're preparing our Canadian Lakes loon survey mail-out.

So far we have about 400 people registered.

We've had over 4,500 participants

over the decades that have contributed to the programme.

The big thing that the survey is telling us,

is that they're not raising as many babies

through to independence over the years.

We're right on the doorstep of them producing so few chicks

that their populations are going to start to decline,

and we're gonna lose a part of us, I think, if that happens.

It's not just happening here.

There's trouble in Wisconsin and Minnesota, too.

Biologist Walter Piper is bearing witness.

Loons are really resilient to still be here.

I just hope they can sustain it.

I started studying them in 1993.

We banded 4,800 adults and chicks in Wisconsin

and now more recently we've added some birds in Minnesota.

Our data show that the population of loons

was declining at the rate of 6% a year.

I mean, that's a very rapid decline.

Put Walter and Doug's research together

and it paints an alarming picture.

Population studies in three regions

show loons are struggling.

That's got me concerned. I think that the data

are beginning to accumulate that the loons are in some trouble,

possibly throughout the range of the loons.

Loons are really good indicators of the health of our lakes.

Being on the top of the food chain, they're producing fewer chicks.

It really tells us that there's some kind of problem in the system.

This summer will be crucial to figuring out why,

as Canadian and American research teams search for answers.

Linda Grenzer is one of Walter's field naturalists,

monitoring eight lakes around her Wisconsin home.

My son came across a loon nest

when he was trying to find turtles.

I fell in love and I was mesmerised by them,

and they're my passion.

Her first love is an ageing male she calls Clune.

He and his mate, Honey, have been breeding here

for more than a decade, allowing her to record their progress.

Over the course of the years, I could paddle right up to them

and they were fine with me.

I think they truly trust me.

Clune was banded in 1998.

He's been a chick-producing machine throughout his life.

Honey. Linda claims that I named her Honey.

I didn't mean to. But anyway, that's struck.

For about ten or 12 years, he and Honey

were really cranking out the chicks.

He's probably the tamest bird in our study area,

and that makes him very photogenic.

Each year we think, "Oh, is Clune gonna come back or not?"

As a loon gets older, they lose their body mass and their strength.

They're older, just like we get older, you know.

Many males sort of hit the wall at about age 15.

Clune is 24 years old.

There's a layer of ice out. I saw one loon,

I went and ID'd him. I was excited because it was Clune.

Every year's a blessing he does come back.

Clune has claimed his lake for one more year.

Now he waits for Honey.

Loons separate at the end of each breeding season.

So there's no guarantee that even a long-time mate will return.

Meanwhile, the Algonquin Park male has some luck.

In late April, a female arrives.

Since Ontario loons aren't banded,

no-one knows if she's last year's mate or someone new.

A lot of folks think that loons mate for life

and they never change partners.

Nothing is different from the truth.

The loon comes back and its mate from last year doesn't show up

and they've been replaced by some other loon,

then, hey, no problem, just accept the new mate and move on.

That's the way it works in the loon world.

PIPER: To be fair to loons, they probably would choose to mate for life,

but once they get on a territory,

their allegiance is to that territory and not to the mate.

As temperatures rise,

the two Algonquin loons start to bond.

They swim and dive side-by-side and become almost inseparable.

In Wisconsin, it's a different story.

As April winds down, there's no sign of Honey.

Linda is sure she's gone for good.

I was devastated, because I knew, you know, that long run is over.

14 chicks they raised on our lake.

PIPER: She was a big, big, vigorous female.

Also a fierce defender of her chicks.

We don't know what happened to her.

She probably died on the wintering grounds somewhere,

but we haven't got a record of her death.

Most loons die without us getting a record.

They could die and wash up on a beach and no-one finds them

and no-one thinks to report them.

Loons are one of the oldest living bird species on earth,

dating back 70 million years.

(YODELLING CALL)

The same iconic calls we know today

would have echoed across the Ice Age,

heard by mammoths and mastodons.

Alright, Waylin, let's go find some loons.

Sheldon McGregor's ancestors, the Algonquin people,

have plied the waters alongside loons for centuries.

I grew up from a fairly traditional Algonquin household.

My mom wanted me to grow up here in the community

and she wanted me to understand where my roots were from.

So we always spoke Algonquin in the house.

You good?Yeah.

Almost flipped, huh? Yeah.OK.

Now Sheldon passes along traditional Algonquin knowledge

to his son, Waylin.

How do you say loon in Algonquin?

Mongo. Mongo?Yeah.

'In the Algonquin culture, animals are our greatest teachers

because we were nomadic.

We would study the animals we hunted.'

Because our survival was dependent on it.

So, a lot of legends and stories were made out of different animals.

I think I see a loon over there. Let's go take a look.

Do you see its head popping up?

Yeah. Let's go take a peek.

'When you see loons, they're alone, they're solitary.'

Loons represent independence in Algonquin culture,

because of hunting. Learning how to be alone

is a very important thing.

They're very elusive too, the way they dive under water.

Generally, you can predict where ducks dive underwater,

they come back usually in the same spot.

Loons will dive and come out at another spot.

So, the loon is seen as a mysterious one.

We don't know a lot about loons.

Their elusive nature makes them hard to study and conserve.

To save the species, biologists need to learn more about loons,

how they interact with each other and their environment,

raise their chicks and even how they choose a nest site.

One of the surprising things is that for some reason

we don't understand, male loons

are the ones that choose the nest location,

and who picks the nest location makes a tremendous difference

to nesting success.

That is, if you put the nest on an island,

then a racoon is going to have difficulty getting to that nest.

But sometimes males choose very bad sites,

usually when they've just settled.

They're just blundering around and they keep moving the nest

until they...they're able to have chicks.

Clune is a veteran by now.

Years of accumulated knowledge tell him where to nest.

And now he has a new mate, an unbanded female.

I knew it wasn't Honey because it didn't have Honey's behaviour.

That female does not want me nowhere near as close

as Honey allowed me to be.

The good news is, Clune and the new female

are getting along just fine.

She's sticking to him like glue as he chooses a nest site.

Clune's picked three nest sites on this lake.

He's nested here. He's nested way on the far south end,

and he's also nested in the conservancy area

since he started nesting in 2009.

Loons actually don't build much of a nest.

Sometimes it's just a little scrape in the ground.

Otherwise, it can be a big mound of vegetation that they pile up.

Back in Ontario,

the Algonquin male has chosen HIS nest site...

..a secluded spot on a quiet lake,

with lots of vegetation to hide from predators.

Now they're ready for perhaps the most important moment

of the breeding season...

(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC)

..something rarely captured on camera.

They mate at the water's edge.

It's over in a few minutes.

Then the male slips back to the safety of the water,

followed by the female.

A few days later, two eggs appear.

The clutch size is almost always just two eggs

and then it's a 29-day incubation on average.

So, pretty much they're sitting on them for a month,

and males and females share incubation.

It's about half and half.

A successful breeding season now hinges on these two eggs,

keeping them warm,

turning to ensure proper embryo development,

and most of all, keeping them safe.

There's predators that can come along and eat the eggs,

especially when the adults are absent.

The main predators are racoons, minks,

mammals that travel along the lake shore.

Leaving the nest puts the eggs at risk.

But staying put is hard work for the parents on a hot day.

And a changing climate means more and more hot days.

Biologists who study climate change

believe it's at least partly to blame

for falling reproduction rates.

What we're finding is that climate change forces species

to endure temperatures close to the limits they can tolerate.

We found that this is causing them to decline.

I studied bumblebees, but we think that the results

we are finding are applicable to loons and other birds.

Loons nest at the edge of water

and so it makes them really sensitive to fluctuations

in those water levels from climate change.

If there are really rains that might wash out eggs off the nest,

that can play a role as well.

In Wisconsin, on a hot day at the tail end of May,

Clune's new mate lays eggs.

But they don't last long.

It happened at 3:30 in the morning.

There was a lot of commotion going on

that woke up my neighbour across there.

I came to check it out and Clune was hoo-ing real softly

and I saw the eggs were destroyed.

My guess, a snapping turtle in the middle of the night

went up and totally tore up the nest.

It's a major setback.

But Clune has time on his side.

Nest failure is so common in May

that many loons re-nest

and go on to raise healthy chicks.

Will he try again?

In early June, things are looking up.

Clune is cruising around, looking for a new nest site.

And now his mate has a name.

We're calling her Lucy.

My husband thought of the name, and I thought it sounded good.

I still miss Honey, but, you know,

I'm hoping she warms up to ME, let's put it that way.

The Algonquin pair are midway through incubation.

If all goes well, in two weeks, the eggs will hatch

and a new life as chicks will begin.

Doug is in the park with biologist Kristin Bianchini,

trying to figure out why fewer chicks

are surviving the summer.

Climate change is one factor.

But is something else happening in the water loons live on?

Where do you think is best for the water sample, Kristin?

I guess in the middle.

So we're measuring different chemicals in the lake

like calcium, sulphate and bicarbonate,

and they give us an idea of the overall health of the lake.

Loons are vulnerable to heavy metal in the water

because those pollutants make their way up the food chain.

A small fish gets eaten by another fish,

the heavy metals are concentrated more and more

at every step of the way, so it really causes problems

in the loons at the end of the line.

Lake water analysis in other parts of Ontario

has identified one metal that's especially bad for loons.

Mercury makes loons anaemic

and it also affects their brain.

So, a loon that has really high mercury

won't do as good of a job taking care of its chicks,

it won't search for food as much,

and so the chicks just don't get the type of care they need to survive.

The real problem is that there's so many different factors

that are affecting loons. Mercury and acid rain

and climate change, habitat loss,

and so, together, all these factors are affecting loons.

In the face of so much environmental change,

loons persevere.

In mid-June, Lucy lays eggs on a new nest site

selected by Clune.

(PIPING)

And in Algonquin, the parents have protected their eggs

for the next miraculous transformation.

On June 17th, they're still on the nest.

Overnight, they hatch.

And by dawn, two fluffy little chicks

are already on the water.

With all these declines in productivity

right across the country, it's really great to see.

The newborns can swim,

but will spend much of their first two weeks hitching a ride.

Their parents' feathers keep them warm

and safe from predators.

They're just floating fluff balls being fed.

You've got that big bill of the parent

and you've got to this tiny little mouth to feed,

but they're so gentle

and they're able to manipulate the small little pieces of food

into the chicks' bills.

Sometimes it's a fish every five minutes.

It's a big responsibility for the parents.

Luckily, loons are built to hunt.

They're really fast swimmers underwater.

Their legs are attached right at the back of their body,

and when they dive under, they stick out their big feet

to do fast turns, so they can outmanoeuvre

and pick off fish underwater

by doing these fancy turns with their feet.

What works in water is a hindrance on land...

and lift-off!

With their heavy, solid bones,

loons need almost half a kilometre of open water to get airborne.

It'll be a couple of months before these chicks attempt flight...

..if they make it that far.

The odds are stacked against them.

Maybe 30% to 40% actually make it through to adulthood.

You can get eaten, you can get separated from your parents

by a motorboat. A lot can go wrong.

(HOOTING)

Those chicks that get bigger quicker

have much higher odds at surviving to be breeders themselves.

Growing fast requires lots of fish.

But finding them can be a challenge as lake environments change.

Climate change can increase warming waters,

which increase algal blooms, which makes things more difficult to see.

For visual predators like loons, that can have a big impact

in their ability to hunt prey.

PIPER: In Wisconsin there's also been a great increase in rainfall,

probably related to climate change.

Rainfall washes lots of sediment, and water clarity takes a hit.

And that correlates very closely with the chick mass decline.

So if it's good water clarity,

chicks will be relatively fat and sassy.

But in a year when the water clarity is poor,

the chicks will lose body condition

and that's associated with a lower survival.

It's not just water clarity.

Pollution from decades of acid rain

can kill off the fish loons feed on.

When I was little, my grandparents used to come out in the fall

for the trout spawn, cos that'll attract a lot of birds

that prey on fish.

I've not seen the trout spawn in the past few years.

Because the trout spawn hasn't happened,

I don't hear the loon calls anymore,

like even just a difference in ten years.

All the animals are very dependent on each other,

and so if one thing's affected,

the other thing gets affected as well.

Everything's interrelated.

(BOTH SPEAK ALGONQUIN)

Sheldon's Great-uncle Joe lived off the land in his youth,

trapping and fishing.

(SPEAKS ALGONQUIN)

He says loons helped guide him on the water.

(WAILS)

(COOS)

Algonquin Park lakes are clean,

a refuge for these two chicks.

They're growing fast.

But summer is around the corner, and with it,

the next stage of life - the path to independence.

In peak summer, cottagers and campers

flock to Algonquin to enjoy the great outdoors.

The bigger lakes bear the brunt of the traffic.

It's quieter here,

where the Algonquin loon family lives on a small lake

off the beaten path.

As the loon chicks get to the two-week marker,

they're almost double the size they were on hatch day.

Their bills are getting longer,

they're looking more of that longer loon shape.

They stop back-riding because they're big enough now

that they can hold their own temperatures.

As the chicks grow, so does their confidence

to venture out on their own.

But they're still fed by their parents.

And as the chicks grow, so do the portion sizes.

Even feeding takes a little practice.

Across Canada, hundreds of loon families like this one

are being monitored by volunteers

for the Canadian Lakes Loon Survey.

Journalist Phill Morgan is one of them.

So, they surveyed here? Yep, there's a column for each pair

and the maximum number of young that you've observed.

I'm writing about the experiences of people of colour in nature.

This is an experience that people like me should have,

to go out and smell the air and observe the loons.

These are such beautiful and transformative experiences.

There's a loon there, just swimming around.

Oh! There's two! Oh, there's a pair!

Monitoring loons this season is really important

because we really need to know the status of these birds

right now to get at what the mystery is

behind the declines in productivity.

OK. So, now I see an adult with two babies.

Both chicks look healthy, but the first-born

has better odds of survival.

PIPER: They will compete for food

and the older chick will often peck the younger chick,

the younger chick falls behind, doesn't get as much food,

becomes much smaller, often is taken by a predator.

Adult loons can be even more vicious

when defending or taking over precious territory.

Your average loon pair is visited quite often

by these unattached non-breeding birds.

If it's a male loon visiting, he's seeing if that resident male

is old enough and whether he might be able to kick him out,

and if it's a female, same thing. She's checking the resident female.

In Wisconsin, Clune and Lucy

are a couple of weeks away from hatching chicks

when an intruder arrives.

Clune leaves the nest to defend his turf.

At age 24, this could be his last battle.

PIPER: If a young vigorous male comes along

who's reached peak size and peak fighting ability,

likely the older male is gonna perish as a result of it

or at least lose his territory.

This rare footage of an intruder moving onto a lake in New Hampshire

shows how fast and furious it can get.

(HONKS)

They grab each other's bills and heads

and then they whack each other as hard as they can with their wings,

an apparent effort to tire each other out.

The stronger one, the one able to sustain this

for the longest time and stay up in the water,

often dunks the head of the weaker one.

We think that a common cause of death in these battles is drowning.

Clune has survived plenty of battles.

He sizes up the competition,

before Lucy joins them in a circle dance.

It's almost like a stare-down.

They'll come within 20cm of each other,

looking very closely at each other,

and circle very close to each other.

Attacks usually come from below.

But Clune held his own and I think he went under

and gave him a little jab and said, "Goodbye!"

And he took off.

Clune has lived to fight another day

and has protected the eggs, his future progeny.

Linda has been keeping daily watch on Clune and Lucy's nest.

Finally, the first chick appears.

Straight into the water they go.

But they don't venture far.

Another egg is still on the nest.

A day later, the younger sibling arrives.

But it's smaller than the first and struggles to move.

The whole family waits.

But the newborn does not leave the nest.

(CHIRPS)

I left and came back four hours later

and the chick and the parents were way out there

and no other chick, and I even checked the nest.

So, I don't know what happened to the second chick.

There are abnormalities

that keep the chick from being able to seek out its parents

or keep its body temperature up.

That second chick looked like it had adult-like feathers

instead of the downy feathers

that are good for keeping the chick warm.

And so, it probably had thermoregulatory problems and died.

In Algonquin, both chicks are plump and healthy.

They're now four weeks old.

It's a gawky phase - downy chick feathers

mixed with new juvenile plumage.

If they can survive two more weeks,

the chicks will reach what biologists consider a key milestone.

At six weeks old, loon chicks can fend for themselves and collect their own food,

and so they're much more likely to survive and become adult loons.

July is peak loon-watching season on lakes throughout the park.

Everyone is keen to see cute little chicks,

Doug and his family included.

Yeah, they're right there.

CHILD: There's no way to tell a male or female loon apart at all?

Only males yodel. So if you hear a yodel, it's the male.

(HIGH-PITCHED CRY)

PIPER: Each male has a distinctive yodel.

So, some are... (MAKES RISING CRY) "Er-er!"

It can put 20 of those er-ers at the end

or just one, or even none.

That indicates how aggressive that male is likely to be.

(WAILS)

That's a wail. Usually they give a wail

when they want to reunite with another member of the family.

People describe it as sounding like a wolf howl,

it's sort of "Wooo!" That's a terrible imitation.

But tremolo is the call that sounds like laughter,

the "Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!"

(TREMOLO WOOPS)

It's not laughter at all.

It's an alarm call that humans often hear

because they are usually the cause of it.

If you hear that, you should back off.

(TREMOLO WOOPS)

Alright, here we go. Alright, good.

As July winds down,

Walter Piper is in the thick of his research, banding loons.

We work 9 to 5 it's just the other 9 to 5.

We can only catch them with any efficiency at night.

You can creep up to them by putting a powerful spotlight right on 'em.

(YODELLING) Shine it right at them.

(HOOTS)

(YODELS)

Get that left...that right wing.

The first capture of the night is an adult female.

Three, two, one...

Yeah, I think you got it. Good. Good work, you guys.

Now they're going back for her chick.

I use an adult call, a hoot,

similar to what the adults use when they're calling the chick.

(SHORT HOOTS)

You got the top? No, we don't have to, it's...

Molly, Molly. OK... One, two, three...

OK, OK. Then I'll take it.

Each bird gets a unique colour combination.

We got The red stripe over yellow. Orange over silver.

11-28.11-28.

It has a nine-digit code,

so that if somebody is walking along the beach in Tampa Bay in the winter

and sees a banded loon that's washed up on the beach,

they can look at that number and send it to the bird banding lab

and they're able to give us really valuable information

on things like migration routes, also survival patterns.

So now we're taking a drop of blood for PCR analysis.

Make sure you guide the bird all the way in there.

3.90. 3.90kg.

And then the chick real quick.

1.18. 1.18.

They just get a few lacerations every once in a while.

They'll nip you. You can't blame them,

after what we're putting them through.

Throughout the summer, Walter and his team check up

on all their banded loons.

We came to this territory today

to see whether silver or green stripe, red over blue,

the male was still there,

and white over silver, cream over yellow

was still there, the female.

And whether they still had their chick,

their three-week-old chick.

Red over blue on the left circle, check.

And if we make another visit a week from now and it's gone,

then it was lost between three and four weeks.

So that's one important piece of data that we gather.

I'm gonna get a location on lake and GPS of the chick.

One look at our banding records across hundreds of territories,

you're able to piece together

return rates and survival rates.

Walter's data has uncovered a crucial piece of the puzzle

in population decline.

One key age group is disappearing at a staggering rate...

Young adults migrating north for the first time.

Many of them come back at age two to five,

and we used to get about 40% of all of our chicks come back.

Now it's about 15%. So there's been a huge unexplained decline.

They are the future. They're the future breeders,

and so I'm enormously concerned about it.

In their southern lives,

without their striking breeding feathers,

loons don't command much attention.

But figuring out what's going wrong here

is critical to saving the species.

We don't understand what the reason is.

We suspect that it could be something going on in Florida

that's costing them their lives.

It could be something between here and Florida that's killing them.

We want to take a closer look.

So, loons that wash up on the shore

in the wintering grounds, we want to get those carcasses

and have a formal examination done

to get good information as to why the bird might've died.

Did it starve? Did it get hit by a boat?

Did it get exposed to pollution?

(HOOTS)

More research is needed to help the Algonquin siblings

survive the wintering grounds,

and make it back here to breed.

But for now, there is hope.

Both chicks are still thriving.

Every time we see a two-chick brood survive through like this

to that late in the summer, it's great to see,

it really contributes to the population as a whole.

(TREMOLO HOOTS)

As fall approaches, while parents tend to their offspring,

other loons have a different focus...

Expanding their social circle.

People often see large groups of loons

and say, "Oh, they all got together, they're doing cooperative fishing."

But that's not what's going on.

These groups of loons are actually non-breeders and failed breeders.

And it is really the equivalent of a singles bar,

where loons get together and size up what's available

for future opportunities.

(WAILS)

In late August, Clune's lone chick passes the six-week milestone,

with enough time to fledge before the ice arrives.

I feel very happy because every day it's growing,

it's got a better chance of making it.

The swift transformation from newborn to juvenile loon

is astonishing.

In one summer, in Algonquin and Wisconsin,

they have grown to two thirds the size of their parents.

Now they must build strength

for the biggest journey of their lives.

(CHORUS OF WAILS)

In September, as temperatures dip,

sleek flight feathers emerge

and the young birds start preparing to leave

the only home they've ever known.

It takes practice to master a new skill.

Commons loons are like us humans.

A chick can look almost full-grown,

it looks like it should know everything

that it's going to know, but just like adult kids,

there's a lot to learn and it takes time.

As with human teenagers,

a free meal is always welcome.

But soon it will be time to fend for themselves.

(ATMOSPHERIC MUSIC)

The parents don't really help them much

with preparing for migration.

The adult loons actually leave first and head south,

and the young loons head south later on their own.

piper: A typical young loon,

its parents might leave in October or so.

The young wait until November,

till the ice is starting to cover the lakes.

It's a perilous few weeks, alone on the frigid waters.

They need time to get stronger,

but not too much or the ice will close in on them.

Instinct tells them when to soar.

No-one can say if they'll be back.

But making it this far is a victory

amid so much uncertainty about the survival of the species.

The projection is that loons will eventually be lost from the US

and they'll probably be lost from the southerly portions of Canada too

in the next few decades.

(WAILS)

And that would be absolutely devastating.

To be camping in Algonquin and not hear that call in the evening,

that would be a huge loss.

That would be a huge missing element of what makes it so relaxing

to be out on a lake in the North Woods.

If there weren't loons, it just wouldn't be the same.

GRENZER: I hope it's not Clune's last summer here.

I hope I have a few more years with him.

But there's a lot of things that can happen

when he goes to his wintering grounds.

I've been studying loons for 15 years now,

and I'll keep studying them for as long as I need to,

because loons are such a critically important part of the environment,

and especially of our culture.

We love loons and, you know, we wanna keep them forever if we can.

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