The New Crew
Caden Payne is LPC’s 2025 Education and Outreach Intern. Over the course of the summer, Caden will be traveling New Hampshire to give presentations and leading guided paddling trips. He’ll also be assisting with our Live Loon Cams, helping to run our Lead Tackle Buyback Program, and documenting the work done by LPC’s staff during the summer through a series of weekly blogs. In this first blog post, Caden gives an overview of the work that he and the rest of the 2025 summer staff will perform this summer for the benefit of New Hampshire’s threatened loon population.
From May 19th–21st, LPC held training for the newest batch of seasonal staff, which includes field biologists, veterinary students, and outreach staff. These seasonal staff will be tasked with many important and necessary duties to ensure the preservation of New Hampshire’s Common Loon population. They will be studying and monitoring loons’ nests and their young, assisting in research efforts to further our understanding of loons and their behaviors, and even educating the local public about these charismatic and cherished birds.
LPC seasonal biologists are essential in our work to preserve New Hampshire’s loons, which is why their training is so rigorous. They attended three full days of lessons on loon behavior, including how to conduct surveys, how to rescue loons in distress, how to detect their nests and nesting habits, and all other aspects of the loon and their lives. These biologists are trained to survey lakes for loons and their nests in order to understand their behaviors in needs which helps us to continue restoring New Hampshire’s loon populatin. Later on in the season, these same biologists will take part in banding loons. With any luck, these newly banded loons will be resighted in the future, which can provide some incredibly useful information.
Loon rescues can be quite unpredictable and difficult depending on the situation, as no two rescues are the same. LPC staff also must be able to recognize when a loon is actually in need of a rescue and what may be a false alarm, which most often happens when they are bathing, as it can look quite unnatural to the untrained eye. Staff was trained on behaviors to look out for in distressed loons and how to go through the process of organizing a loon rescue operation. The staff was also taught how to safely capture, handle, and transport injured and distressed loons, as well as who to contact in those instances.
The veterinary students this season from Tufts University will perform necropsies of deceased loons to determine their cause of death. This is vital in understanding their threats and how we can better protect the species. They have completed three necropsies so far.
Education and outreach staff are responsible for leading guided paddling trips and giving presentations throughout the state to encourage a more tight-knit lake community full of members dedicated to preserving the Common Loons of New Hampshire. They also work hand in hand with the lead tackle buyback program, ensuring a promising future in reducing lead poisoning in loons from the use of lead tackle. The presentations will educate local communities all about the fascinating lives of loons and the threats they face, the great work being done to preserve them here, and how everyone can do their part in protecting the beloved species.
