We always celebrate when someone identifies a new banded adult. “You got an exclusive!”, I say to one of my students, if they nail all bands on a loon that we banded as a juvenile in the study area and have
We always celebrate when someone identifies a new banded adult. “You got an exclusive!”, I say to one of my students, if they nail all bands on a loon that we banded as a juvenile in the study area and have not seen since. In fact, Melanie reported an exclusive ABJ (for Adult Banded as Juvenile) just yesterday; this one happened to be a four-year-old male hatched on Samway Lake that she ID’d on Elna. (Linda’s photo shows an exclusive that she nailed bands on, this one from Soo Lake.)
Sightings of young ABJs are valuable. These loons are all “floaters” — nonbreeding individuals that live on small lakes or parts of large lakes that are not used by breeding pairs — so they live a marginal existence. Still, they provide us with data on juvenile rates of survival and return to the study area, which contribute to mathematical models that tell us whether our population is stable, increasing, or decreasing. Young ABJs are also the future, because these green, reticent individuals — they are notably subordinate when interacting with territorial residents, have low fighting ability, and are well below optimum adult body weight — will ultimately replace our established and well-loved territorial breeders.
I spend most of my research time asking behavioral questions about our long-term territorial residents, which is regrettable, because it leaves young ABJs out. In fact, a vexing question concerning young ABJs has been lurking in the back of my brain for some years now: where do they all go? From the countless small celebrations the students and I have had over the years at 