A mixed season for N.E. birds
ERROL, N.H.
THEY WERE siblings for only a moment. Only two loon chicks hatched this summer at Lake Umbagog National Wildlife Refuge out of 20 nesting territories on the 7-mile-long lake. In the last two weeks since I took their photographs, one of them disappeared. The surviving chick is struggling. It is wheezing, said refuge biologist Laurie Wunder.
"We're hoping it's not pneumonia," she said.
The chicks symbolize a second straight poor breeding year for loons in much of New Hampshire and Maine. Harry Vogel, senior biologist and executive director of the Loon Preservation Committee in New Hampshire, said, "Population models suggest you have to average a half-chick per pair per year to sustain a loon population. We just hit it last year. We may not hit it this year."
Susan Gallo, wildlife biologist at Maine Audubon, said, "Usually I get some negative reports and some great reports. I'm not hearing anyone tell me it was a great year. Some lakes that have 40 to 50 loons are down to 18 to 20."
Neither Vogel nor Gallo said this was a cause for panic. But they are concerned that loon populations have leveled off or are declining. Last year, the chick count by Maine Audubon in the southern half of the state was the second lowest in 24 years of keeping records. In New Hampshire, adult pairs increased from 82 in 1978 to 217 in 1998, but refuse to climb past 220.
They hope the birds have not hit a combined wall of development, global warming (with severe spring storms the last two years), and the carelessness of boaters and fishing enthusiasts who still use toxic lead sinkers, which loons often swallow.
"You want to refrain from blaming any one thing," Vogel said, "but overall, the challenges are increasing."
Bald eagles continue to thrive. As if to celebrate their removal from the federal endangered species list, New Hampshire set a new record of 14 nesting pairs. In Maine, Gallo said eagles are "doing great" in preliminary observations. They went from 266 fledged eaglets in 2001 to 316 last year.
"The eaglet production is what we want it to be," Gallo said.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com. 
