A Morning with an ACLC Lake Monitor
Nicole Crist uses binoculars to watch an unbanded loon on Middle Saranac Lake.
On a warm July morning, Nicole Crist places her lightweight single-person canoe into the water at the South Creek Access at 5 a.m. to conduct her weekly lake monitoring on Middle Saranac Lake in New York.
At this hour, the sun is not fully up but the sky is light. Nicole paddles her way through South Creek and into Middle Saranac Lake, where she immediately encounters a pair of loons leisurely swimming in the fog. Nicole uses her binoculars to get a closer look and determines that this pair is not banded, meaning that neither loon has any colorful bands on their legs and are therefore not being tracked by research biologists at the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation (ACLC). She floats with the loons as the sun begins to rise, and then paddles on to check on the lake’s many other resident loons.
A loon on Middle Saranac Lake.
Nicole has been working as summer field staff for the ACLC for 22 years, long before the organization received nonprofit status in 2017. She currently monitors 12 lakes, budgeting a full 40 hours per week to paddling each lake and recording observations and measurements related to the loons that are spending their summer breeding and nesting season there.
ACLC relies on 34 field staff like Nicole, as well as volunteers, to monitor over 100 lakes throughout the Adirondack Park during the summers. They collect data about territory occupancy (Are there loons on this lake? How many? Are they staying or coming and going?), the reproductive efforts of loons in each territory, the band status of the loons on their lakes, and overall reproductive success (Did chicks hatch and survive?). The data they collect and report back to ACLC helps inform long-term research into the impacts of mercury concentration in Adirondack lakes. More recently, it also helps researchers begin to measure potential impacts of PFAS - the complex synthetic chemicals found in cleaning products and nonstick cookware, as well as many other common household items - in water systems. Because loons are top predators that feed on fish, they are excellent indicator species of environmental contaminants. What impacts loons is likely impacting all living things that live in and around Adirondack lakes… including humans.
The observations that lake monitors like Nicole make also help us gain a deeper understanding of common loon behavior and, increasingly, the impacts of climate change on loon nesting success.
The next pair of loons Nicole checks in on have a single chick with them and are swimming near the shoreline. The chick is riding on its mother’s back, while the male loon swims and bathes nearby. Nicole watches this pair for several minutes, enjoying the quiet and stillness of the morning, but she’s bothered that there is only one chick.
Nicole Crist has been a lake monitor observing loons for 22 years. Her favorite thing about loons is their language - “Not just the crazy calls [that everyone knows], but their quieter calls to each other and their chicks, the chirps and purrs and hoots.”
A recently hatched chick riding on its mother’s back.
“I’m sure there were two eggs in the nest,” she says before making her way towards the nest, which is hidden in a cove of grassy vegetation - ideal nesting habitat for loons.
Sure enough, there are eggshells in the nest indicating that two chicks hatched, but only one seems to remain. It is a reality of life in the wild that newly hatched and very young chicks are vulnerable to predators. Adult loons face few threats from predation themselves, but loonlets are tiny and easily scooped up by other birds of prey, opportunistic mammals, or large fish. Riding on their parents’ backs is one way that very young loon chicks can find protection from predators, but they can’t stay aloft all the time.
Nicole Crist checks on a nest of loon eggs that she worries are no longer viable. She has clear guidance from the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation’s research biologists and many years of training that permit her to get close to a nest without disturbing it.
Nicole collects the larger eggshell fragments that can be tested for mercury levels and then measures the height of the nest and the distance of the bowl (where the eggs actually lie) from the water with a tape measure. She makes a note of the numbers in her notebook.
Nicole first came to the Adirondacks as a summer camp counselor. She fell in love with the region, and after a brief hiatus to move out west, she returned to live in the Inlet/Eagle Bay area. Her first summer back, she participated in a brook trout study. The second summer, it was zooplankton. The third summer she found Dr. Nina Schoch and she has been observing loons ever since. Nicole has an undergraduate degree in biology and completed one semester at a field study school. She has always loved learning and working outdoors.
Nicole Crist delicately marks one of the eggs with an X. When she returns to check on the nest, if the X is still in the same place, it means the adult loons have abandoned the nest and are no longer rotating the eggs.
“I was lucky enough to spend my summers growing up on a lake in Maine, which felt similar to here,” Nicole said. “I came to love everything about those lakes - the loons especially.”
She structures her days to get her paddling done early in the morning so she can be present for her kids the rest of the day. During the school year, Nicole works as a teaching assistant. “As much as I love the women and families I work with during the school year, I really would be happiest if I could paddle year-round,” she said.
Nicole continues her rounds of the lake, spotting several more loons, some swimming on their own, before making her way into Weller Pond. There is another nest in the narrow inlet flowing into the pond, and this one has two eggs in it but no adult loons in sight. Nicole worries these eggs are no longer viable, but before she collects them to turn into ACLC’s research biologists, she gently marks one with an X. If the adults are still incubating this nest, when she checks on it again, the eggs should be in different positions, the X in a different location.
Nicole hopes for the best for these eggs, and continues on her rounds.
Field work, especially in wildlife biology, is often a practice of waiting and watching. It is a chance to revel in the small details of natural spaces, to become intimately acquainted with the tiny ways the world is always moving, always changing. It is a chance to understand that animals, like us, make their own decisions. They are driven by instincts and basic needs, but they are not always predictable. Often, field work is a practice in waiting and not seeing what you’re looking for. And that becomes part of the observations that you record.
Nicole Crist enjoys the solitude and the quiet of her early morning rotations on the lakes she monitors.
For Nicole, it’s all part of the attraction: “It’s the quiet, and the connection with the water, and the summer days I get to have with my children” that keep her coming back year after year. “It’s the opportunity to give a little something back to this beautiful place I call home.”
When she’s on the lake, when the loons are calling and when the water sounds and smells so nice, Nicole said, “I feel like the luckiest person around.”
Denise Silfee, ACLC Education & Communications Director