Each spring, Widespread Loons flock to Montana’s lakes to nest after wintering alongside the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. For the previous three a long time, Tony Gangemi has adopted them, surveying the lakes close to his residence to {photograph} the stately waterbirds. He’s deeply accustomed to their shiny crimson eyes, black-and-white patterned plumage, and haunting calls.
This previous spring, nonetheless, marked a primary. In Could, Gangemi bought a name from his neighbor about an unusual-looking loon household on their lake. Instantly, he drove over and hopped in his kayak. When he noticed the loon mother and father and their two newborns, it was not like something he’d seen earlier than. One of many chicks—usually a fluffball of black feathers—was nearly fully white.
At first, Gangemi guessed that this “little cotton ball on the water” was albino. However over the following few weeks, it developed a shadowy define of its mother and father’ intricate patterning. This signaled that the loon was truly leucistic, which means its feathers lacked most, however not all, of their regular pigment. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime encounter,” says Audubon area editor Kenn Kaufman. Some scientists have estimated that leucism happens in about one in every of each 30,000 birds. Kaufman guesses it’s even rarer in loons, since stories of pale-feathered loons are so few and much between.
Over the following few months, Gangemi’s life revolved round documenting this outstanding chicken. Each different day, he returned to the lake to {photograph} the loonlet and its household for 3 or 4 hours at a time. He has lengthy crafted his schedule in order that he could be out many of the day to report birds. From 2 a.m. to 10 a.m., he works in upkeep for the Metropolis of Whitefish. Then out into the sector along with his digital camera he goes.
Gangemi was cautious to maintain his distance, typically merely sitting on the dock along with his high-zoom lens and ready for the birds to seem. He watched intently because the contrasting chicks grew up, taking part in within the reeds and pestering their mother and father for crayfish.
On the smallest signal of hazard, the loon mother and father would fly or dive over to their chicks, making loud calls and flapping their wings. “They immediately are ensuring that their infants are close to them,” Gangemi says. Full-grown loons don’t have many predators, however immature ones could be swallowed up by eagles, Ospreys, and even massive fish like northern pike. And a leucistic loon is much more weak, says Kaufman, due to how its shiny white feathers stand out in opposition to the darkish water.
Predators aren’t the one problem for loons in Montana, the place they’re listed as a species of concern. The birds are choosy about the place they stay: Their breeding lakes should be under 5,000 toes in elevation; greater than 5 acres in space, since they want a protracted runway to take flight; and guarded by forest, with out an excessive amount of noise or disturbance. However human exercise is more and more encroaching on their most popular spots. Motorboats or kayaks and canoes too near shore can startle the birds and trigger them to flee their nests. Shoreline growth takes away essential nesting habitat.
Loons are additionally threatened by lead poisoning, which may happen once they by accident eat lead fishing deal with. Solely a handful of states throughout the Widespread Loon’s breeding vary limit lead fishing deal with; Montana just isn’t one in every of them.
On their Montana lake, although, the loons made it safely by means of the summer season. Because the season drew to an in depth, Gangemi watched eagerly, hoping to get a snapshot of the leucistic loon chickening out because it began its migration. First, one mother or father flew off. Every week later, the second mother or father and the black-feathered chick left, leaving the white loon by itself. Gangemi nervous one thing was flawed. In spite of everything, feathers missing pigment are weaker than common ones. The loon stayed for 2 extra weeks; the final picture Gangemi bought of it was on August 20. When he returned a number of days later, the loon was gone.
“I didn’t know what I used to be going to do as soon as the loon flew,” Gangemi says. In complete, he put in over 300 hours taking photos of the loon and its household. “It was lots of remedy for me,” he says. “I actually loved the serenity.” He’s taking a brief break from images till this winter, when he’ll head to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, to {photograph} migrating Bald Eagles that cease there to feed on salmon.
However there’s hope for an additional sighting: Across the age of three or 4, Widespread Loons usually return to the place they have been born to breed for the primary time. The Montana Fish and Wildlife Division tagged the leucistic loon, so scientists will know if and when it comes again. And since leucism is a genetic situation, there’s a great likelihood that a number of summers from now, the ghostly loon, with a brood of its personal tiny white puffballs, might hang-out this Montana lake as soon as once more.
