Loon Magic/Loon Magic - Wayzata Technology (8011) (1993).iso/mac/text/06wildm.h

Text File | 1993-07-26 | 4KB | 70 lines

** WILDERNESS MUSIC **

   Night Chorusing

   The full loon repertoire can best be appreciated during night
chorusing. Early in the summer season, mid-May to mid-June in most
regions, loons talk a good part of the night, using mainly the tremolo
but also the wail and yodel. Of the many moments of loon magic,
these are special. On the first night of a trip in May of 1970, I
camped with three friends at Saganaga Lake right on the Minnesota-
Canadian border. The calling began at sunset and lasted well into the
night, and it will stay with me a lifetime. On an island in the middle
of this sprawling border lake, we were surrounded and we
surrendered. Sigurd F. Olson, writer and wilderness philosopher,
described in his book The Singing Wilderness an evening of night
chorusing on Lac la Croix, a similar lake about thirty miles to the
west of the site of our Saganaga symphony

   "That night it was still, and in the moonlight the loons began as I
had heard them before, first the wild, excited calling of a group of
birds dashing across the water, then answers from other groups until
the entire expanse of the lake was full of their music. We sat around
until long after dark and listened, but instead of becoming quiet as
the moon went high, the calling increased and there again was the
wild harmony, the music that comes only once a year, when it is
spring on Lac la Croix."

   Sigurd T. Olson, Sig's oldest son, was probably with his father that
night, although there were too many similar nights to know for sure.
Years later, after his formal study of loons at the University of
Minnesota, Sig Jr. offered a couple of generalizations regarding loon
choruses: choruses are restricted to spring and early summer and
dusk to dawn, and they include most loons in the area. Olson's early
observations have been supported by recent research by Lauren
Wentz who identified 9:30n10:30 p.m. and 3:30n5:00 a.m. as the
peak chorusing time periods. Her studies at Michigan's Sylvania
recreation area indicate that chorusing occurs from ice-out until the
end of June. Most likely the role of these extravagant audio-displays
is linked to territoriality; Barklow has observed pairs of loons going
to the middle of their territory before joining the choir, perhaps to
stake out their aquatic turf.

   Calling at night is natural for loons. While the rates aren't lower,
the conditions are perfect for long distance communications. Judy
McIntyre, a Syracuse University biologist, points out that during the
day loons can use visual cues, wing flaps for instance, to
communicate, but at night they have only calling to keep in touch.
During a two year study of loons in the Minnesota-Ontario border
country, Jim Titus heard the peak of evening chorusing occur
between the third week of May and the first week of June. (An
association with nesting and related territorial defense is probable.)
Titus described in his doctoral thesis a typical evening chorus: the
first call is usually a wail, followed quickly by tremolos and an
occasional yodel with calls spreading to every nearby loon until an
area for miles around was "permeated with an orchestration of loon
sounds."

   Titus believed loons throughout his entire sixty-four square mile
study area participated in the same chorus. While no one knows for
sure how far loon calls carry, Sjolander and Agren estimated that the
yodel of the yellow-billed loon can be heard by people for up to five
miles. But here we are concerned with the hearing ability of loons, a
more complicated unknown. Whatever the listening range of evening
chorusing, all loon watchers should make a late spring trip to high-
density loon country, like Minnesota's Boundary Waters Wilderness
Area, Ontario's Quetico or Algonquin Provincial Park. The traveler
will be rewarded with music that will echo in memory for a lifetime.

*****