Citizen scientists count the loons

Spring's high water flooded some common loon nests in Glacier National Park this year, but for the most part the charismatic birds had an average nesting year in the Park.

Volunteers and biologists counted 44 adults, eight chicks, 15 pairs and 14 singles over the spring and summer months on the Park's lakes, said Jami Belt, the Park's citizen science program coordinator. The eight chicks were found in five different broods.

Glacier Park is a comparatively safe haven for loons in Montana. Loons are listed as a species of special concern, and the Park supports 20 percent of all nesting pairs in the state. Glacier Park provides ideal habitat, with a multitude of untouched lakes and undeveloped shorelines.

The common loon is a large bird, as big as a Canada goose, although it's ungainly out of water. It nests close to the water's edge, making it particularly vulnerable to disturbance and to flooding.

Record snowpack and spring rains resulted in very high water in Glacier Park's lakes this spring, but despite soggy spring, the loons did OK, Belt said.

"They had an average year," she said last week.

Loon populations are primarily counted by volunteers who hike to backcountry lakes with binoculars and spotting scopes to keep an eye on birds without disturbing them. The citizen science program has grown substantially since it first began a few years ago.

Today, trained volunteers monitor and pull weeds in the Park and count mountain goats, pikas and Clark's nutcrackers, as well as look after loons. Belt, through a grant from the Glacier National Park Fund, keeps track of the data. This summer, a greater effort will be made to keep track of the Park's pikas.

A relative of the rabbit, the pika is a small creature with large round ears that lives in talus slopes. The pika is an indicator species of climate change because it needs deep snow to insulate its rocky home in winter. Pikas don't hibernate but accumulate piles of vegetation in the rocks to feed on over winter.

Pikas also rely on snowmelt and precipitation in the summer months to grow the vegetation they feed on. So far, the Park's pika population is holding its own, but in some areas of the U.S., individual populations have been extirpated. Climate change is the suspected culprit in those population failures.