With every new checklist added by birders, we’ll be able to build the case for the more than 20 sites that have been identified by the Important Bird Area Technical Committee as needing more information before they can be approved as Maine IBAs. See the map below for the sites we are focusing on this spring. If you have additional sites you’d like considered as IBAs, or if you have questions about the locations or using e-Bird to report your sitings, e-mail Susan Gallo at sgallo@maineaudubon.org.

Visit the IBA home page for more information about the Maine IBA program or to see a list of current, approved IBAs established in Maine.

Thank you for your help, happy birding!

Loon x-ray showing swallowed lead sinker.

For 25 years volunteers for Maine Audubon have collected loon carcasses found washed up on beaches and shorelines. Over that time these some 450 carcasses have been collected and sent to veterinarians at Tufts University for examination to try to determine the cause of death. The results are compiled in a twenty page report, and they show that lead sinkers and lead-headed jigs are the leading cause of death for Maine’s loons.

• Lead poisoning has been documented in 27 species of birds in North America, but the rate of ingestion is much higher in common loons compared to other waterbirds.
• Loons die when they ingest lead objects, either accidentally ingesting them while eating gravel from lake bottoms, or by catching fish with lost or broken lead sinkers and jigs attached.
• Lead kills adult loons almost exclusively, and death by lead happens within a fairly short time, probably two weeks or less.
• Of 352 adult loons collected since 1987, 97, or 28%, had died from ingesting lead fishing tackle.
• Most of the lead objects (58%) examined from loons that died from lead poisoning were lead-headed jigs.  Another 32% were lead sinkers.
• Jigs likely ranged from one inch to two and a half inches at the time they were ingested.
• Lead mortality has not changed significantly in the time period before the ban on lead sinkers a half-ounce or less (2002), compared to the time since.

Maine is lucky to have a robust population of 3,000 adults in the southern half of the state, and that number has increased from a low of around 1,500 back in 1987. However, the number of chicks produced each year remains low (never more than 400) and has not increased at all over that time period. 

Every chick matters, and every adult loon lost to lead is a potential parent.

Because of concern over the long-term health of our loon population, Maine Audubon has introduced legislation to expand the current lead sinker ban, and we’ve written a short fact sheet to share the major findings from our recent analysis.

Use this fact sheet to hang on your office bulletin boards, or in meetings [pdf] »

Stay tuned at our advocacy pages for more information about this bill as it moves through the legislative process this month, and what you can do to help.  Letters and phone calls to legislators will be important in passing this critical legislation, and we thank you in advance for any help you can offer!

Receive Action Alerts by Email »

Hancock County Plant List and Order Form
Plant orders must be in by MARCH 8th, pick up plants in Ellsworth on April 20th.

Penobscot County Plant List and Order Form
Plant orders must be in by MARCH 8th, pick up plants in Bangor on April 27th.

Kennebec and Somerset County Plant List and Order Form
Plant orders must be in by MARCH 14th, pick up plants in Augusta, Winthrop or Skowhegan on April 20th.

Franklin County Plant List and Order Form
Plant orders must be in by APRIL 20th, pick up plants either May 10th or May 11th in Farmington.

Counties not listed do not have spring plant sales. Questions? Call Susan at 781-6180 ext. 216 or e-mail sgallo@maineaudubon.org.

Loon nesting on an man-made nesting platform. Photo by Turner Ragsdale

There’s not much to a loon’s nest, just a simple mound of vegetation and muck scooped from the water’s edge. Loons nest right beside the water so they can slip on and off the nest easily, quickly, and quietly, without being seen by predators. When all goes well, a loon pair will incubate their eggs for about 29 days, then leave with their newly hatched chicks to spend the rest of the summer on open water.

But often, in Maine, things don’t go quite like that.  Heavy rainfall in early summer, like the June rains of 2012, can lead to rapid water level rises of a foot or more. The eggs sitting atop a loon nest can simply float away.

But loons have options.  They can start over again if their eggs disappear, remounding vegetation, often fairly close to the first nest site.  And if the rainy June evolves into a dry July, the loons will be able to keep the next batch of eggs warm and dry.  But even with moderate weather, keeping lake water levels constant can be an issue, especially if dams on the lake are adjusted to raise and lower water levels throughout the breeding season in June and July.  This is the case where a man-made loon nesting platform makes the most sense, and where they are likely to get the most use.

Here are some quick thoughts, tips, and links on loon nesting platforms that will help you make an informed decision about putting one out on a lake or pond near you.  See the platform links below for much more detailed information on raft construction.

If a lake has loons that breed successfully, year after year, a platform will not likely be used.  Platforms can be a good management tool when changes in water level, or persistent mainland predators, result in egg losses year after year.  We suggest you watch a loon pair for a couple of years, documenting where their territory boundaries are, where they are attempting to nest, and if they are successful at hatching out eggs, before deciding to place a platform. Loons are never 100% successful, and an occasional loss of an egg may not warrant placing a platform.  Consistent losses of eggs over three or more years, due to predation or water level changes, makes a good case for experimenting with a platform.

Making and maintaining a nesting platform is a serious investment of time and money.  Take a look at “traditional” cedar raft plans as well as plans for an “eternal” platform design from Wisconsin.  Whatever route you choose, platforms need to go in the water early in the season, as close to ice out as possible.  Loons start defending their territories and looking around for nest sites as soon as they return in early spring.  The sooner the platform is out, the greater the chance that it will be seriously considered by loons as a place to nest.  Platforms need to be securely anchored to the lake bottom, and watched throughout the summer to make sure they stay put. Putting platforms in quiet coves, away from wave action and in deep enough water that they will not be stranded if water levels drop, will improve chances of success.

It can take up to three years for a loon pair to use a loon platform, so patience is required!  Don’t give up if the loons don’t immediately take to the platform.  They are likely checking it out, and evaluating how good a nest site it might be.  Keep putting the platform out in the spring (and taking it in in the fall), and give it at least three years to see if it works. If after three years the loons are staying away, there’s probably something not right with the location.  Or they may just not like it.  See the raft plans for more details on good raft locations.  If loons are successful on natural nest sites, they may never change to the platform.

Never place a loon nesting platform without having a rough idea of where loon pairs are on a lake.  Drawing in a new loon pair, or causing conflict by placing a raft between two existing territories, can do more harm than good, and can cause additional nest failure, exactly what you are trying to avoid with the platform in the first place!

For much more detailed information about the science behind raft placements, read Chris DeSorbo’s 2008 article in the Northeastern Naturalist. For printed copies of raft plans, e-mail bwilson@maineaudubon.org.   And as always, visit the Maine Loon Project home page for more information about loons in Maine.

A multi-chambered bat house like this can provide a safe place for mother bats to raise their young.

With great press about the plight of Maine’s bats (see recent article in the Sun Journal, and also check the MPBN website for a piece due out later this week), I’ve been getting lots of calls and e-mails from folks asking for advice about bat boxes.  Should they put them up?  Will they work? Where should they get them?  Will they keep the bats out of their attic? Lots of good questions, and I’ll try to provide some answers here.

It’s tricky to get a bat house right, in terms of size, temperature, and location, and even if all those things are spot on, boxes may not get used if the habitat around the box is not right.  Bats like water, they avoid thick forest, and of course they need a ready source of insects to feed on.  The best scenario for a successful box is if you have an existing colony in a house or barn and you want them to move out.  In this case, it may take several seasons for the house to be discovered and occupied by the local bats.

The best place to go for advice is Bat Conservation International, the go-to organization for all things batty.  They have an excellent handbook for building bat houses, or several free plans on their “Install A Bat House” webpage.  See the Resources section for lots of information about how, when and where to put these up, or the Buy A Bat House section for links to retailers who are certified to build quality boxes to BCI specifications.

Quickly, a few tips I’ve gleaned from all the information at BCI: Bigger boxes are better…many of the bat houses on the market are too small to function as maternal roost colonies.  The four-chambered nursery boxes are the size that our mother bats are looking for so they can get together with other mothers and leave their pups in a large group during the night.  Boxes should be in a sunny location, and for our climate, should be painted a dark color.

If you want bats out of your house, you’ll need to do some work to exclude them from the cracks and crevices they are using to access your space.  BCI has a great information sheet on how to go about this, or there are several professional excluders listed for Maine.  The basic idea is to make the exits one-way out, so bats can get out of your space but can’t get back in.  You don’t want to simply seal up active colonies or you’ll end up with a mess of dead bats.  It’s best to avoid working on excluding bats from June through mid-August, the time when mother’s and young bats are using the roost.

Ideally, sealing up your space and excluding bats should be done in conjunction with a bat box.  Bats do use the same area from year to year, so if you seal up a space, they’ll be back looking for new access when they return.  By providing an easy-to-use space in a bat box near the entrance to the old roost, they may never resort to searching out a new entrance to their old space. And again, bat houses may take some experimenting to get just right.  You can try different external walls, or a pole mount, if the box seems to get too hot.  Or try raising or lowering the box.  It may take some patience, but it will pay off if you can get a thriving colony to occupy the box.

If you know of a bat colony and want to help with our maternal roost surveys, be sure to visit Maine Audubon’s bat page at maineaudubon.org/bats FMI.

P.S. Dick Brown had raised the question of how we should communicate as a large group…the multiple group e-mails may not work for some and they can certainly clutter up the inbox.  With our new web capabilities at Maine Audubon, we decided to try posting the alerts to a consistent page at http://maineaudubon.org/blog/category/conservation-issues/amphibian-monitoring/ From there, you can reply on-line, people can read and respond to your replies, etc.  It is a public forum so others may see the alerts (and may also post replies…), we’ll have to see how it goes.  Our tech wizard Robert may have some other solutions later in the season.  Right now he is buried trying to clean up and revamp our site.  Give it a try and we’ll see how it works!  Feedback always welcome!