'Citizen scientists'

Volunteers log thousands of hours studying loons in Glacier

"Other objects worthy of notice will be the soil and face of the country … the animals of the country … [and] the time of appearance of particular birds, reptiles and insects."

- Thomas Jefferson's instructions to

Capt. Meriwether Lewis, June 1803.

Two hundred years after Lewis and Clark passed through Montana on their way to the Pacific, Glacier National Park officials formed their own small-scale version of the Corps of Discovery.

Rather than march to the sea in search of the Northwest Passage, this group of 46 volunteers hiked through the park and looked for common loons.

The project was the first of what could become a series of "citizen science" opportunities in Glacier, with enthusiastic amateurs helping researchers gather the data needed to determine the status of various plant and animal species.

Although the loon volunteers were just surveying lakes and counting birds this summer, they - like Lewis and Clark - were contributing to scientific exploration in its most basic and immediate form.

"Some professional researchers look askance at 'naturalists,' but to me, science is built on observation," park biologist Steve Gniadek said. "That has to be the foundation. As you gather more observations, you use them to develop hypotheses and models that can be tested. The ultimate outcome is scientific research, but it's all based on observation."

Gniadek has been studying Glacier's loons since the late 1980s.

For years, systematic data was collected only on Montana Loon Day, a once-a-year survey that helped identify where the birds were living and how many were there.

While these one-day snapshots provided critical information about loon demographics, they didn't paint a very clear picture of what happened over time.

"We felt we were missing a lot of the details," Gniadek said. "If chicks were being predated, we missed that event; if chicks were produced later in the year, we missed that."

Gniadek and other researchers decided a citizen science program aimed at tracking loon populations throughout the summer was just what was needed.

"We thought it would supplement the work that had already been started," he said.

Sallie Hejl, resource education specialist with the Crown of the Continent Research Learning Center, received a National Park Service grant to pay for this year's initial efforts. The Glacier Fund recently agreed to pay for two more years.

After an intensive, daylong training session in May, the 46 intrepid volunteers went forth, hiking or driving to different lakes to look for loons and count the number of adults and chicks.

Some of them participated once or twice, Hejl said. Others went multiple times over a period of months.

"I probably did 22 hikes from June into September," said Cheryl Wright, one of the volunteers. "That was more than I'd normally have done. It was very satisfying. I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

All together, Hejl said, the volunteers contributed almost 2,000 hours to the survey efforts and explored 45 lakes.

They located 45 adult loons, including 19 mated pairs, as well as seven chicks.

Wright spotted two of the chicks during one of her first hikes on the west side of the park.

"Surveying a lake took a minimum of an hour," she said. "The loons nest right on the edge, so you have to walk 20 or 30 feet from shore, where there's no trail. You're trying to make as little noise as possible to keep from scaring the birds, but you're also trying to avoid bears."

By sitting quietly on the shore and waiting for loons to get used to her, Wright said they sometimes would swim within 25 feet.

"Especially the bachelors," she said. "You could see them preening or tucking their heads back. They'll just hang around and guard part of the lake. If you get too close, they'll start calling and raise up and flap their wings aggressively."

Kasey Kephart, another volunteer, saw four loons during the summer.

"I didn't really enjoy getting up at 5 a.m., but there were rewards," she said. "I had a ruddy duck land within 15 feet of me once, and I saw a moose swim all the way across Lake McDonald."

Kephart said the volunteers had quite a bit of data to record, including location, weather conditions, date and time, and whether there were any boaters or hikers around.

When a volunteer saw or heard a loon, he or she would collect behavioral observations, such as whether the bird was swimming or diving, sleeping, flying, nesting or courting.

Gniadek said this project will help document the long-term productivity of loons in Glacier Park. However, it isn't detailed enough to tell researchers what factors are important to the bird's nesting success.

"That's the next step," he said. "The first thing we had to do was learn where they're nesting. Then we can look at what site-specific factors are important to their productivity and what we can do to better protect them."

Gniadek and Hejl said several other research questions have the potential to be good citizen science projects.

For example, "I'd love to do a survey of beaver lodges and beaver dams," Gniadek said. "By taking an inventory, it would let us know how well the park's beaver population is doing. Right now, we have no idea. We can't answer that question."

Hejl, a former research biologist, also is considering a project related to Clark's nutcrackers.

"Clark's nutcrackers are one of the bird species we're concerned about," she said. "They depend on whitebark pines, which aren't doing well in the park. We'd like to figure out how that's affecting them."

And if people are already collecting data about loons or nutcrackers or other animals, Hejl thought it might be nice for them to take note of any noxious weeds or blooming flowers they see during the same trip, to help researchers document new weed infestations or track how Glacier's flora is responding to global warming.

"We have a lot of ideas for citizen science projects, but people would need to be trained," she said. "It's a matter of figuring out what would be most profitable from a research standpoint. Glacier is a huge park - there's no way the park biologists can be everywhere - so the more people we have helping look for different things, the better idea we'll have about what's really going on."

For more information about citizen science opportunities in Glacier, or to volunteer for next summer's loon project, contact Hejl at 888-7863.

Reporter Bill Spence may be reached at 758-4459 or by e-mail at bspence@dailyinterlake.com