• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Northern Wisconsin

Info, Stories & Reviews From Those Who Love The Northwoods

  • Home
  • About
    • Facts & Trivia
    • Map
    • Books
  • Things To Do
    • Events
      • January
      • February
      • March
      • April
      • May
      • June
      • July
      • August
      • September
      • October
      • November
      • December
    • Seasons
      • Winter
      • Spring
      • Summer
      • Fall
    • Attractions
    • Kids
      • Nature Activities
        • Winter
        • Spring
        • Summer
        • Fall
  • Lodging
    • Cabin Rentals
    • Resorts
  • Real Estate
  • Food
    • Restaurants
    • Bars
    • Cafes
    • Recipes
  • Wildlife
    • Elk
    • Loons
    • Wolves
    • Albino Deer
    • Birds
  • Fishing
    • Fishing Reports
      • 2014
      • 2013
      • 2012
      • 2008
  • Classifieds
You are here: Home / Loons / Loon Facts or Fiction? An Update from Dr.Piper

Loon Facts or Fiction? An Update from Dr.Piper

April 16, 2013 by NWisconsin 1 Comment

Northern Wisconsin Loon Flying Low Over WaterDr. Walter H. Piper knows loons. I mean… he really knows loons.

Since 1993, he and several colleagues have led The Loon Project, an in-depth study of loon territorial behavior in Oneida County, Wisconsin. During the late spring and summer months, you can find Dr. Piper on many of our lakes, banding, studying and analyzing data to better understand our “Great Northern Divers”.

We recently had the chance to catch up with Dr. Piper, who is also a professor of biology at Chapman University, in Orange, California. What follows is a 5 part interview series where Dr. Piper explains his research and shares insights into some fascinating findings about loon behavior.

NorthernWisconsin.com:  Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, The Loon Project and how you got involved with it?

Dr. Piper:  I have been interested in birds all my life. I grew up a birdwatcher in Cleveland, where my mom nurtured my interest and took me on lots of local birding outings. I have always been good at science, so it was fortunate that I have come to do research on birds. Now I am able to spend many hours outdoors collecting data on birds and then to return home to analyze their behavior quantitatively.

It was long ago when I started the Loon Project. In the summer of 1992, I was a postdoc at Indiana University studying dominance interactions among broods of white-throated sparrows in the Upper Peninsula. As it happened, I was staying at the Whitefish Point Bird Observatory run by Dave Evers. Dave had recently begun to capture and mark loons in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin with colored leg bands. In the course of his work, he noticed that some of the birds he banded were being evicted from their territories by unbanded birds. To him, this was a nuisance, because it meant that he needed to go back and mark the new unbanded owners. To someone like me, interested in aggression and dominance, this was exciting; it meant that loons showed a form of territory acquisition that was not well documented in animals.

I immediately urged Dave to pursue these findings with a detailed behavioral study. When Dave informed me that he could not do so, but was happy to support my efforts, I began my investigation of territory acquisition… in 1993. Since the tightest cluster of loons that Dave and his team had banded was in central Oneida County, Wisconsin, that was where I began my work. Those 8 lakes became the nucleus of what has become a study area containing roughly 100 lakes each year.

More from Dr. Piper and The Loon Project discoveries:

Part 1: Loons Facts or Fiction? An Update From Dr. Piper
Part 2: Do Loons Mate for Life?
Part 3: Male Loons Fight to the Death
Part 4: Loon Banding & How We Track Them

Part 5: Favorite Memories

[Image: Courtesy of The Loon Project]

Filed Under: Loons

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Ken Fox says

    August 16, 2013 at 10:06 am

    Hi Dr. Piper
    Enjoyed the info in this site. It confirms a lot of stuff I have observed. I loon ranger on a small lake in northern Michigan, near Cadillac -Olga Lake. This is the first year I have had a successful nesting and now have one chick!!-after 5 years! The lake is in a National Forest and is a damed stream thus has a lot of water fluction-3 nest failures were storm and flooding related. This year the nest location was the same as last year (so same male?!) but water was high so they added 2″ of bottom stuff. An egg was laid on 5/14 but lake rose 3″ and egg was in water. I didn’t think it would hatch so I raised nest by adding short branches (cris-crossed), dry ferns and pine needles-then replaced nest &egg. Loons were NOT happy but accepted it and laid annother egg which hatched! Thanks Ken

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Promote Your Business For Free

Write an article, offer a review, tell a story… We publish unique content & give you free publicity in return. Submit your story.

Recent Posts

  • Eagle River Fishing Report: June 9, 2014
  • Marathon & Lincoln Fishing Report: June 9, 2014
  • Eagle River Fishing Report: June 2, 2014
  • Marathon & Lincoln Fishing Report: June 2, 2014
  • Eagle River Fishing Report: May 26, 2014

Loon Products From Amazon

Books By Dennis Olson

Copyright © 2021 · News Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in