If you live on a lake in New Hampshire or spend time on one or more lakes, LPC welcomes your help in tracking and protecting New Hampshire’s loons through their breeding season. Volunteer observers are free to contribute their loon sightings from the comfort of their own deck, pontoon boat, kayak, or fishing spot.
Loon Preservation Committee staff monitor about 350 lakes in New Hampshire for loons. Not all of these lakes hold loon pairs, but all of them have the potential for loons, and we hope that more of them will hold pairs, and loon chicks, in the future. The ratio of lakes to LPC field biologists is very high (over 40:1), and we rely on our volunteers to help us assess the presence and breeding success of loons on New Hampshire’s lakes.
The most important questions that volunteers can help us answer through careful observations and record-taking are the following:
- Did the lake have either visiting loons or resident loons at any point in the season?
- Did the lake hold a pair of loons (loons that stayed together for at least four weeks and regularly called or defended a specific area of the lake from other loons)?
- Did a pair of loons attempt to nest on the lake?
- Were loon chicks hatched on the lake, and if so, how many?
- If chicks hatched, how many were surviving by mid-August?
