Live Loon Cam
Loon Nest Streaming Live from the Lakes Region of New Hampshire
Updated June 22, 2025
Summary: Two eggs on Cam 2 – Hatch expected June 24-27
Two eggs on Cam 1 – Hatch expected July 17-20
Looncam 2025
Two eggs on LoonCam 2
2 Eggs on LoonCam 1
If you enjoy the LoonCam, please consider becoming an annual member of LPC. Membership supports the preservation of loons in NH and research for loon lovers around the world. See https://loon.org/memberships/
To watch both cameras on one screen, use the link https://cams.loon.org
LoonCam News Headlines and Chat Summaries
June 23 – The cam 2 hatch guessing contest produced these results. We’ll see who is closest. 
June 22 – Cam 1 has two eggs. The second arrived Sunday morning, June 22 at 12:23:53 AM. That is 60.8 hours between eggs, a common delay. If all goes well, hatches should occur around July 17-20. The nest on Cam 2 continues to be proceeding normally, with hatch expected this week.
June 19 – Cam 1’s pair laid its first egg at 11:32:02 on Thursday, June 19’th. A second egg can be expected within 60 hours, perhaps less.
June 15 – The Cam 2 incubation is progressing normally, is past the half-way point and we continue to see several incubation shift changes per day. Looncam 1’s pair have been spending more time around the nest and this morning the female spent more time than normal on the nest. Viewers speculated if there was an egg bump seen when she left the nest, suggesting the time is near.
June 11 – Yesterday on LoonCam 1, “Eggberts” stayed safe, despite persistent black flies and occasional loon anxiety. Viewers closely monitored nest exchanges, watching incubations and noting minimal disturbance. Over at LoonCam 2, the loons made up for lost time energetically, with nest visits and unusual vocalizations. It was noted that a wood ducks family has been spending the night in the nest. Both cams occasionally provided close-ups that allowed detailed observation, keeping watchers engaged and alert to the day’s subtle dramas.
June 7 – Incubation has proceeded normally on LoonCam 2 with normal shift changes. On 6/6, the male had to run off an intruder, video here https://youtu.be/uqPdr5I2nOs The loon pair at LoonCam 1 is getting active, with more frequent time on the nest and mating. Last year, their first egg arrived on June 18’th.
May 31 – Overnight, a goose pair briefly commandeered the cam 2 nest, departed around dawn, undetected by the loons, leaving an incubation gap before Dad slipped in at 04:46 to roll and brood the two eggs, unfazed by the intruders. Mom relieved him at 07:11, Dad returned at 09:09 after a one-minute exposure, and Mom resumed at 10:39, still incubating mid-afternoon. Eggs remain intact, Mom’s beak hook appears to be harmless, and the camera remained stable while viewers logged each exchange. The loons left the nest after 8PM and left us wondering if the geese will return overnight.
May 30 – Early this morning, viewers watched the arrival of the second loon egg at 2:39 AM, following a brief labor. The female loon quickly settled, and by 3:10 both eggs were safely covered. Chatters celebrated together, sharing their joy at seeing this special moment live. Despite a few blurry camera moments and some sleep-deprived fans, spirits were high as the loon family’s nest grew by one.
May 29 – Today, the loon cam 2 community watched over the single egg, with both male and female loons sharing nest duty. The male sat early, then the female incubated for nearly 90 minutes despite relentless bugs. Although an alert about a second egg went out around noon, it was a false alarm. Chatters swapped observations, tips for loon identification, and bug repellant ideas, along with their own loon stories. Engagement stayed high, with most focus on nest activity, a second egg and hatching predictions. The day ended with the egg safe and viewers waiting to see if the geese will incubate the egg overnight again.
May 27 – First egg laid on Cam 2’s nest at 12:43PM.
May 23 – Both looncams are active, but without eggs. Cam 2 is enjoying half a dozen or more visits during the day while cam 1 is seeing 2-3 visits. At this point, we can’t predict when the eggs will arrive, but cam 1 seems on schedule for mid-June. Cam 2 is hard to predict because it is the first year on the nest for this female, but given the increased activity, it could be soon.
May 19 – The cam 2 pair spent a lot of time in the nest today. We are encouraged by this behavior, and some think an egg could arrive at any time, but anything goes. The cam 1 pair briefly visited the nest yesterday but didn’t get on it. With so little activity at cam 1, and a recent history of mid-June eggs, we are focused on cam 2 for now. You are welcome to watch cam 1, but it is only available via direct link. https://www.youtube.com/live/vXq5CR7Z7x8
May 17 – The pair at LoonCam 2 started mating yesterday and today, have been looking at nest sites, both on shore and on the artificial nest. While activity will still be sporatic, Cam 2 is now live to the public. Cam 1 will go public when the loons are more interested. Today, they spent a few minutes at the nest so it could be soon. Last year, the eggs for the cam 1 pair didn’t arrive until mid-June, so it could still be a while. Meanwhile, if you want to watch both cameras at the same time, try this page – still in development https://cams.loon.org/
May 16 – The goose guard is off cam 1’s nest and the YouTube stream is live. Loon sightings remain rare, still only a few minutes a day, but you can rewind up to 12 hours, using viewers’ timestamps, to replay any events. Use this link to view the live stream. The loon pair for cam 2’s nest haven’t shown much interest in the net yet, but were seen mating, upriver against the shoreline, so we are hopeful.
May 13 – A goose pair continues to visit the cam 1 site daily so the nest remains closed but we will likely remove the goose guard soon. At the cam 2 site, a goose pair and its gooslings are using the nest for an overnight shelter. Here’s a 53 second clip of the geese leaving this morning. https://youtu.be/tmMZE2VI0tA The loon pairs have been scarce at both nests with more activity expected in the next week or two. We are monitoring both sites and will start broadcasting when there is something to see.
May 10 – Both cameras are now running and should go live by late next week. Geese are still eyeing the nest on Cam 1 and a loon pair has been spotted near cam 2. While loon activity is rare, we’ve captured a few videos, saving them in the 2025 LoonCam Playlist on YouTube. The link is https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZsmKjZcNXbbC2t1prFkpBxd5YfrQVes-
May 7 – A loon pair has been visiting the barricated looncam 1 nest once or twice a day, for a few minutes each time. The geese pair has been on an every 2 day schedule, spending over a half-hour agressively exploring for a way on the nest. The equipment for looncam 2 is packed up and ready to be deployed as weather allows.
May 4 – The loons visited the nest briefly, as seen in this video clip https://youtu.be/nSo_YUJ_3tI – We had to put a barrier on the nest, because there is a pair of geese that desperately want to use the nest. After they find a different nesting area, we’ll remove the barrier and the loons can take up residence.
May 1 – May Day treat! Looncam 1 was installed today and we streamed for a few hours to test it out. As soon as the loons start appearing regularly, the live feed will go up on this page.
April 29 – It is a year of uncertainity for our looncam nests. There is a pair in the area of looncam 1 and there is a brand new nest ready for them. At the moment, it is covered to prevent the geese from using it. Last year, the loon pair did not produce viable eggs, but it was their first year as a pair. We hope for better results this year. The female from the looncam 2 location got sick and died in the fall. There is a new, so far unidentified, pair hanging around the nest at the looncam 2 site. It is not uncommon for a nest to go unused the year after the pair is broken apart, but this is a popular area, so hopes are that this new pair is successful. We plan to have both cameras live sometime mid May. Last year, eggs arrived in mid-June on both nests. This year, we are switching our internet provider to one using Fiber Optics, which allows for faster upload speeds and better image resolution.
Looncam 2024 – Recap
All LoonCams finished for the 2024 season as of 5PM July 17
LoonCam Nest 1: Egg 1: 6/18 10:56AM / Egg 2: 6/21 12:35AM (61 hours apart) – 1 egg crushed on June 26 at 11:39AM – Second egg crushed July 11 at 4AM
Looncam Nest 2: Egg 1: 6/17 at 8:29AM / Egg 2: 6/19 at 8:09PM (59 hours apart) – FIRST PIP SEEN Sunday 5:13PM. Hatch completed Monday around 11:30AM. Chick is healthy. EGG 2 retrieved on 7/17, X-Ray’d and confirmed to be inviable
Below is the 2024 season play list from Cam 1 and 2.
For best quality, set your YouTube resolution to 1080p and click the “live” button. Click on the speaker within the video window to unmute the sound. You can rewind the stream up to 12 hours with the red dot at the bottom of the YouTube stream. To visit the chat room, go to YouTube directly in your browser or phone app.
Since 2014, LPC has streamed live footage of nesting loons to the public. Viewers are able to witness the entire nesting process, including nest site selection, egg laying, incubation, and (in most years) the hatching of chicks. Much of the time, once the eggs arrive, the scene is the same: a loon sitting in a nest. Occasionally (often several times per hour) the loon will move around or stand up and turn the eggs. The male and female loons take turns incubating, and nest exchanges happen several times each day and can last minutes or much longer. Sometimes, the loons communicate quietly with each other, and they will occasionally will show agitation when the sitting loon isn’t ready to leave the nest. Watching a hatch and the chick learning to swim are must see events. While the loons on our webcam have historically experienced high levels of nesting success, this is not always the case. We can’t control nature, and nesting loons face many challenges. We have witnessed territoral disputes preventing nesting, inviable eggs, eggs and chicks lost due to predation, sibling rivalry and water level changes disrupting the incubation. Nothing is guaranteed. The loon cam can be fascinating to watch and to some, addictive.
Sound is included in the stream, letting us listen in on quiet conversations between the pair. On occasion, the mic will be muted to respect the neighbor’s privacy. Because camera technology sufficient to continuously monitor loon nests, along with crowd sourced timestamps is a relatively new development, footage captured by the loon cam might raise new questions about loon behavior. The blog strives to provide insight or hypotheses into these questions.
Along with the streaming broadcast, the YouTube chat window is open for loon lovers, and subscribers to the LPC YouTube channel, to chat about what they are seeing. LPC biologists will occasionally join the chat for Q&A sessions.
The live stream has a replay feature and viewers are able to rewind up to 12 hours to watch an egg turning, nest exchange, or other interesting events. LPC maintains a video archive, so if you miss an event of interest, we may be able to go back and make a clip of it. Over the years, well over 100 video clips have been saved. Many are available on LPC’s YouTube channel.
Please visit LPC’s YouTube Channel.to see the video clip archive. Subscribe to get notified when notable videos are published. Watch a chick returning to a nest and much more. LPC has a large collection of recorded loon nesting activity.
YouTube Chatting Policy
LPC loon cams broadcasts use the YouTube chat feature so that viewers who subscribe to LPC’s YouTube channel can interact with each other, educate each other, and share timestamps with each other when events occur, like egg turns, nest exchanges or a visit by the big turtle. In order for LPC to keep the chat open as a family friendly site, dialog should remain on the topic of loons and be civil. We’ve learned from previous years that requiring chat posters to be subscribers cuts down on spam-bots and moderation is rarely needed. If chatter goes too far off topic or the conversation becomes hostile, a moderator may take action by interjecting, removing comments, blocking users or temporarily shutting down the chat. If you need to alert the operator to policy violations, please send email to looncam@loon.org
Please help us keep the chat open by following these guidelines:
- To post, subscribe to the LPC channel.
- When posting to chat, consider that there may be dozens of people reading your post, so avoid personal discussions.
- Restrain from posting about other nests, especially this year when two are active at the same time. It confuses other viewers, especially if they are looking at past chat posts for time stamps in order to catch up. In cases where the information about other nests is too important to keep quiet, please be clear that your post is about another nest.
- Contribute questions and comments that are on topic and family friendly. Don’t worry about asking about something that has come up before. Many viewers are stopping by for the first time. The regular chatters are often willing to offer their opinions and insight. We are all here to learn.
- Be nice to each other and especially welcoming to first time chatters. We want the chat room to be a friendly place for nature lovers to communicate with each other about loons. There is no room in the chat for aggressive (or passive aggressive) comments towards other chatters. Comments that LPC staff believe to violate this rule may be deleted, and repeat offenders may be temporarily or permanently banned from the chat room, without warning.
- People are welcome to say hello when they first join a chat session but others should limit the cascaded acknowledgements of “hellos”, “good byes”, “thank yous” and “how are yous” especially during times when there are a lot of viewers. Too much chatter makes it hard for other viewers to find information about loons in the chat stream. In other words, please help keep the signal to noise ratio more signal, less noise.
- Suggestions, complaints, concerns and requests to be unbanned should be emailed to the loon cam operator at looncam@loon.org
The Nesting Pair of Loon Cam 2
In 2016, intruding loons interfered on this territory enough to cause a nest failure. Without a nest or chicks to defend, the bond deteriorated between the pair, which had been together on the territory since 2013. The rest of the 2016 season was chaos with no clear resident pair.
In 2017, the current male and female emerged as the new resident pair and immediately began nesting. They successfully hatched and raised a chick, which suggests that both of these loons probably had previous nesting experience on other territories. We know that the male did because he was banded in 2006 on a nearby territory on the same lake. We banded the female this same year (2017), so we don’t know her previous history.
The loons can be identified by its leg bands. The male’ left band is red over white, the right band is silver over red dot. The female’s left band is a white stripe over blue and the right bands are silver over yellow stripe.
To be alerted when a hatch is underway subscribe to the free LPC newsletter.
Camera Information for Loon Cam 2
The live video image on this page comes from a high-definition Axis video camera with pan-tilt-zoom features, a microphone and night-time infrared illumination. The camera is mounted on a post, about 30 feet from the nesting area. An Ethernet cable runs across the bottom of the pond to an island. The camera and associated equipment on the island is battery powered, recharged by solar panels. From the island, the video stream is sent 1/4 mile to shore by WiFi, and into an internet connection. The camera sends a video stream to YouTube, which supports hundreds of simultaneous viewers. A video stream archive lets us replay choice moments and publish them on the LPC YouTube Channel. The webcam is funded through donations to the Loon Preservation Committee’s LoonCam fund. Please click here to contribute to the operational costs.
Acknowledgements
Funding for the loon cam project is made possible by LPC’s Loon Recovery Plan and your donations. Technical design and loon cam operation is provided by LPC volunteer, Bill Gassman (www.linkedin.com/in/billgassman). Streaming and archiving services are provided by YouTube, Charter/Spectrum Communications, CamStreamer and AngelCam. The camera installation would not have been possible without the generous permission of several property owners.
Loon Cam FAQ Loon Cam 2
When will the eggs hatch?
The first egg is normally laid around June 10’th. Since incubation takes 28 days (give or take a few), the hatch should be expected sometime around July 8-11’th. Once the pair nests, we can predict more accurately.
How does the loon cam work?
The camera about 30 feet from the nest, on a wooden pole mounted in the water. An Ethernet cable supplies power and an internet connection from shore to the camera and infrared light. Sound comes from a microphone, mounted in the top of the nest. It is muffled to avoid picking up people talking and there may be occasions where it is set low or muted to protect the privacy of the neighbors. The video stream runs 24×7, over a business class internet service to YouTube Live. With this design, hundreds can view the video feed at the same time, and the stream is converted to match the viewer’s device and internet connection speed. We also employ a 7 day streaming archive service and can make a video clip of interesting events.
Can I see the archived videos?
The YouTube player is configured so that you can replay the most recent twelve hours of the video stream. This is useful if you missed watching a nest switch or egg turning. Edited video clips from the archive are occasionally published on the Loon Preservation Committee’s YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/LoonCenter. Let us know if you see something interesting that we’ve missed. The archive goes back a week.
Is there a Twitter hash tag to alert people to special events?
Yes. Our blogger, Biff, will continuing using Twitter again this year. To participate, follow the #LoonCam hashtag. We encourage viewers to send out a Tweet with #looncam in the text when something special happens. That will help us go back through the archives and publish a video clip of the events. Our Twitter/X name is @lpc_nh.
Where is the loon cam located?
It is in the lakes region of New Hampshire, home of LPC’s Moultonboro based Loon Center. For the privacy of the loons and the gracious people that allow placement of the loon cam, the exact location is unidentified.
Can I donate to the operation of the loon cam?
Yes! Please use the donation button here or on the loon cam page and choose the “Loon Cam” option to direct your donation. Donations over the past few years have funded two cameras, infrared lights, a solar power array and associated equipment to make the camera reliable. The primary cost remains the high-speed internet connection. This year, we estimate it will cost about $1000 to operate both loon cams 1 and 2. The stream starts around May 1 and runs into mid July. Your donations help make it possible to offer a high-quality live stream.
Can I control the view?
At times, the LPC staff may take control of the camera and change the scene or follow interesting events. If you want a specific view, send an email to looncam@loon.org or mention your request in the YouTube chat room. If a loon cam operator is on-duty, your request may be granted.
Can I make the picture bigger?
Yes, use the YouTube full-screen icon, which shows up when you touch or mouse-over the bottom of the picture. Be sure to select a high resolution, using the settings gear. We broadcast with a resolution of 1080p. You can also open up the stream on the YouTube web site, smart TV, or mobile application.
How can I participate in the chat room?
On the YouTube page or mobile app (but not on the LPC’s web page), there is a chat feature, where you can have a discussion with other Loon Cam Viewers. The LPC staff will chime in when they have a chance and not in the field. The direct access URL to chat is https://www.youtube.com/live_chat?v=TBD2024_popout=1
Can you turn the sound up? I can barely hear it.
The camera’s microphone is very sensitive and is set as low as possible. This provides some natural sounds while protecting people’s privacy. It is common to hear the loons quietly conversing. At times, the microphone will be muted.
Why is the picture jerky or fuzzy?
First, try setting the resolution to 1080p on your YouTube page, using the gear in the lower right under the picture. If you are on a slow or congested internet connection, YouTube reduces the resolution and the picture will be less sharp. The slow-down may also be on our end. When there is a lot of movement, like wind on the water, we can run out of upload bandwidth. We broadcast in 1080p resolution and strive for 15-20 frames/second.
Who do I contact if I have a problem or question?
For technical questions or problems with the looncam, send email to looncam@loon.org For other questions or concerns, contact volunteers@loon.org
