My Dad Is Building A Maternity Ward For Loons At His Lake House

A nesting Loon on a raft

I received an email from my dad today.  It caught my attention over everything else in my Inbox because it was titled this, “Benedict lake Loon maternity unit.”  A bunch of different things crossed my mind as to what this email could be about.  My dad is a retired physician and in his time he has delivered many babies.  I thought for maybe a second that possibly a crazy pregnant woman came across my dad’s house while in labor and had no where else to deliver her child but at his lake house.  Could this email contain some tall tail of the lake house being turned into a temporary maternity unit for a wayward lunatic traveler?

The Loon: Minnesota State Bird

As I began to read the email memories of a different type of Loon with maternal need came rushing back to me.  There are many types of different waterfowl at my parent’s lake house and my dad likes to take note of the mating rituals of all of them.  He has amused my friends before with tales of the homosexual geese at the lake and how they mate for life.  It turn out that the “straight” geese are even approve of gay adoption, giving the “gay” geese eggs to hatch and goslings to raise as their own.  We always joke that my dad can tell which geese are the gay couples because they have better drapes.  When my dad talks about the reproductive habits of the Loon he speaks of the fact that they are not nesting like they used to in years past.  The lack of Loons nesting has lead to a decline in Loons reproducing new offspring and as a result the Loon population in Minnesota is in decline.

The frame for my dad's Loon raft

The Loon is the Minnesota State bird.  Even though, information about the lack of nesting and the decline of the population of Loons  in Minnesota is hard to come by.  I was able to find an article on the MPR website from 2005 about the situation.  My dad has blogged about the problem on his blog Dr. Mark Says in a recent post titled, “Loon Rafts“.  Here he outlines the top reasons for the decline of the Loon in Minnesota:

‘ The Loons are in trouble in Minnesota and Wisconsin.  We are now thought to be as low as 700 nesting pairs in the two states.  The Loon is moving North to Canada.

The reasons are.

1).  The rising Eagle population that takes the chicks.

2).  Fluctuating lake levels, that leave the nests away from the water.

3).  Raccoons taking the eggs on the shore line.

4).  Boat traffic in nesting areas, especially big wakes that swamp the nest and can cause loss of eggs.  Also when the Loons get scared they can become “flusher Loons” and flush their eggs.

5).  The cold windy Springs we have had of late.  The conditions are brutal on the newly hatched chicks, that in natural nest are pitched by their mother straight into the water, never to return to the nest.

On Benedict Lake we are down to two nesting pairs.  Last year one chick was produced but did not survive.  The year before there were no chicks.

So, I was informed of this fact as my neighbors as they left for Florida in the fall.  They left giving me orders to fix it! ‘

My dad's loon raft, built in 8 hours

And fix it he will!  The pictures you have seen of the Loon raft my dad is building came from the Mantrap Lake Nesting Loon Raft Plan. If you would like more information about nesting Loons or would like to make a Loon Raft of your own contact me.

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Tags: Benedict Lake, bird population, Dr. F. Mark Carter, Dr. Mark Carter, Loon, Loon decline, Loon nesting, Loon population, Loon Raft, Minnesota lake

This entry was posted on February 17, 2010 at 12:39 pm and is filed under Science & Technolgy, Twin Cities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.