Montana Best Times: Big Sky Birding Column

Looney Start Yet A Happy Ending (April 2008)

The year 2008, marks the 20th anniversary of the famed 1988 Yellowstone wildfires. For those fortunate or in some cases unfortunate to have been around to experience this cataclysmic event, it was something one will never forget. 1988 was an extremely dry year; most noticeable were the strong winds that dried everything out in a short period of time. The first of several large uncontrolled wildfires reached the Grant Village area in early July, as the months went on nearly half the park was burned by the Yellowstone wildfires in some form or fashion. And the smoke was so thick, it was difficult to figure out which area of the park you were in at times. Contrary to popular claims, the 20,000 firefighters assigned to this fire didn't really put out the Yellowstone wildfires that year, the firefighters really only could protect the existing buildings/structures. It was a cataclysmic event, way beyond the control of humans. The fires finally went out in late fall, and it was the result of a change in weather, namely a snowstorm followed by a series of snow storms. This is one story that sticks out in my mind, one that has a looney start yet a happy ending.

Like many days all summer, the air was extremely thick with smoke from the wildfires. I was working two jobs-on regular time as the park ornithologist and any spare time trying to protect the resources of the park from the onslaught of firefighters from all walks of life. On September 10, 1988, I got a call from a maintenance worker at Old Faithful who informed me a Common Loon had landed in the dry sewage treatment pond at Old Faithful, and wanted to know what to do. All the ponds were bone dry. So I mentioned I was busy, but the best solution for the time being was to give the loon some water. The next morning I arrived at the described sewage pond, and sure enough there was the loon. Only the sight was adorable. The clever maintenance worker had rigged up a garden hose to a water source and the loon was sitting under a small but steady flow of trickling water. The loon was in water heaven. The loon accidentally got there because it was fall and loons were migrating, and the air was so thick with smoke that it lost its orientation and mistakenly landed on a dry pond envisioning it was water.

So I walked up to the loon and couldn't help but smile at it, for it was so content, and with leather gloves picked it up and placed it is a cardboard box and transported it to our home in Mammoth. What caused the problem was simple; the loon lost its bearings and mistakenly landed on a man-made structure a dry sewage treatment pond. Normally we let wildlife take their chances in Yellowstone, but this was a case of obvious human intervention.

That evening I walked in the door of our Mammoth home, and my wife Karen was curious what was in the box. So I told her the loon story details and how it couldn't take off due to the lack of water in the sewage pond. Because loons and grebes have their legs positioned so far back on their body, and because they possess webbed and lobate feet respectively, they require a relatively large body of water to get airborne. But the true purpose of bringing it home was to make sure it was physically OK. And the only way to test this was to put it in our bath tub. So my wife filled the tub with water, and the loon was placed in the makeshift human pond. What was interesting was that it immediately started bathing and preening to get refreshed and get rid of all that dirt and grime. It had so much energy. Then I went and got a life-sized loon decoy that I had personally carved years ago, and paced it in the water with the loon. The loon went ballistic, and was so excited that it started making tremolo and yodeling sounds all over the house. So we left it alone in the bathtub for awhile, and it wasn't long until we started hearing these thump noises. Karen and I went to investigate and found the loon had catapulted out of the tub, so I put it back in the bathtub. This went on for quite some time. And even though I studied loons, I was surprised how high a loon could jump out of the tub and yet not get hurt. It reminded me of footage of penguins jumping out of the water onto icebergs. But I quickly gathered that their legs were uniquely positioned and so strong, that it allowed them the capability of catapulting out of water if need be. Later on in the evening I put the loon back in the box to make sure it wouldn't get hurt. There was nothing wrong with this bird, it simply needed water.

So early the next morning, I drove to Yellowstone Lake and released the Common Loon in the southwestern portion of the lake called West Thumb. And the loon gingerly swam away forming a v-shaped wake, as it disappeared into the still thick smoke of the wildfires. The cacophony of sounds it made was hard to describe, but the reward was well worth the effort, of a looney start yet a happy ending.