SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Vermont is home to one of North America's most beloved water birds...
(SOUNDBITE OF LOON WAILING)
SIMON: ...Loons. In 1983, amid a boom in lakeshore development, biologists found only a dozen pairs of loons in the whole state. But they've made a strong comeback. Now climate change poses a threat. Scientists are hoping a new phone app will help, as Vermont Public's Abagael Giles reports.
ABAGAEL GILES, BYLINE: Not one but two loon couples come to northern Vermont's Great Hosmer Pond each summer to nest and hatch their chicks.
ERIC HANSON: Oh, my gosh. Cool. So I could not see this loon nest from the shore, but he's tucked in on a nice marshy island. And now that we're a little closer, I can see the head popping up.
GILES: It's a sunny day in early June, and loon biologist Eric Hanson is looking for chicks in a nest through binoculars from a canoe. Above a clump of bog laurel, a black head with a beady eye peers back at us - an adult loon.
HANSON: This bird is actually in a very relaxed position. The head's upright. The bill's horizontal. You know if you're a little too close when they do what we call the hangover position, with the head extended and the bill down low.
GILES: Loons have been coming to Vermont for millions of years - longer than songbirds. Now they're doing pretty well. Last year was a banner year for chicks, but these ancient diving birds also face new and growing threats. For one, climate change is bringing more heavy rainstorms that make lakes murky or turbid and harder to hunt in. Vermont saw catastrophic flooding a few years ago, and Hanson says loon chicks really took a hit.
HANSON: Back in '23, we actually had two chicks. One died. One went over the dam 'cause it was so malnourished on lakes that had really high turbidity right after those storms.
GILES: So scientists need to keep a close eye on their populations. But Vermont has hundreds of lakes, and Hanson, who works for a local environmental nonprofit, can't get to them all. For decades, he's relied on a grassroots network of volunteers to count loons for him. They send him data on soggy handwritten notes, in voicemails and emails, and he spends hours logging and organizing it all. Loons just have a charisma that Hanson says people can't resist, including their vocalizations, like this one recorded by the New Hampshire Loon Preservation Committee.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOONS HOOTING)
HANSON: They all become a bunch of kindergartners and just start hooting and hollering for no apparent reason at all.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOONS HOOTING)
GILES: Thanks to some settlement money from an oil spill a while back, his team has built a phone app that they hope will make it all a lot faster. It's called LoonWeb.
HANSON: GPS track. Yes. I'm going to have it track us, so that will allow us to just move along. I'm going to start the survey, and we will just start moving up the lake. I'm going to add a loon for the bird I see on the nest.
GILES: The whole process takes about 45 seconds. Hanson hopes someday this tool could lead to a national database of loon populations fed by citizen scientists across the country. That way, researchers like him can spend their time looking to the future. For example, he's curious if PFAS, forever chemicals that are in waterproof clothing like raincoats, are also disrupting these sensitive birds.
HANSON: If we can get people to think about what loons need - a healthy lake, healthy shorelines, healthy riparian areas - that's going to help the whole lake ecosystems.
GILES: Maine Audubon is also testing out LoonWeb for bird surveys this summer. So now, if you want to help keep track of loons, there's an app for that.
For NPR News, I'm Abagael Giles on Great Hosmer Pond in Vermont.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOONS WAILING) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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