Follow migrating loons

You can follow the fall migration movements of eight Common Loons from Minnesota and Wisconsin online on the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center website Common Loon Migration page at

http://www.umesc.usgs.gov/terrestrial/migratory_birds/loons/migrations.html

The birds were tagged with radio transmitters in July as part of a federal study on avian botulism. Ten loons were tagged, two of them from a lake near Collegeville. Eight birds are being followed at the moment. Here is a summary of movements to date.

Minnesota bird 55482 left the Collegeville area on Aug. 22, and was found dead at Green Bay, Wis., four days later. It had died of aspergillosis, a rapidly fatal respiratory infection caused by a fungus.

Minnesota bird 55480 moved from the Collegeville area to Forest Lake on Oct. 16, the next day flying east. It was on Lake Michigan on Oct. 24.

Wisconsin birds 55489, 55484, 55479, and 55491 had not moved from their breeding lake (the Turtle-Flambeau flowage) as of Oct. 24.

Wisconsin bird 55490 moved from the T-F flowage on Oct. 16. It went to Green Bay, and was located on Lake Michigan Oct. 24.

Wisconsin bird 55488 left the T-F flowage in September, and on Oct. 25 was on Green Bay.

Loons also were tagged and tracked in 1998. Male 2550 left its breeding lake in August, was on Lake Michigan from into November, and was wintering in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida panhandle by Dec. 7. Male 2521 left Wisconsin in August, was on Lake Erie in November, and off the coast of southern Virginia later that month. Male 2522 left northern Minnesota in August, moved through Wisconsin in November and December, and stopped in Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, on its way to the Georgia coast. Female 2523 left its breeding lake in August, moving to Lake Michigan, Ohio, and Virginia before settling in on off the eastern Florida shore in December. Female 2538 left Wisconsin in August, was on Lake Michigan in November before flying to Tennessee where its signal went dead. Male 2539 left Minnesota in August, was on Lake Michigan in November, and stopped in Tennessee on its way to the coastal waters of the Florida panhandle.

In the photo, a Common Loon.