Researcher Tunes In on the Call of the Elusive Loon

William Barklow has been eavesdropping on a 25-million-year-old conversation nobody fully understands, using modern techniques in an effort to solve the mystery of the loons.

“We know very little about them,” said Barklow, a Framingham State College biology professor who has spent more than 14 years studying the elusive member of the duck family. “We don’t know how long they live. We don’t know how many there are. There’s a lot of unanswered questions.”

Barklow travels the northern New England woods from spring until winter, recording the calls of male loons. Female loons are silent.

He theorizes that loons have a system of communication that includes the “yodel” and the “laugh,” the latter a warning to flee from danger.

Tracked by Voice Prints

The recorded yodels, believed to be signals of aggression, are converted to voice prints to track and identify the loons, which are difficult to catch and band since they spend virtually their whole lives on water.

“In this way there is no intrusion. If you band a loon, you must catch it. This way, they are not disturbed,” Barklow said, adding that only a few naturalists use “voice” patterns to track animals.

Since each male loon’s call is slightly different, he can match the voice prints to make identifications. One loon he tracked has been returning to a northern Maine lake for 9 1/2 years after wintering in the Atlantic Ocean.

In addition to helping determine life span and numbers, the voice patterns could give insights into behavior and the effects of chemical contamination, he said.

“They are very sensitive to human development. In some cases they’ve been chased by boats on lakes. They really like to be left undisturbed.”

The four species of loons range around the world in northern latitudes. They are plentiful in the arctic but threatened in the southern edge of their habitat, such as Maine and central New Hampshire, said Barklow, who has tracked loons as far south as Walden Pond in Massachusetts.

Barklow has put out pleas from New England to Alaska for recordings of yodels, and is studying two baby loons in New Hampshire to determine how the calls are learned. “All this takes a very long time,” he said.

Meanwhile, the reclusive loons have become quite a sensation, Barklow said. “There’s something very haunting and ethereal about the calls.”

An album of calls he recorded in the 1970s has sold nearly 90,000 copies. Calls also have been used in a production by the San Francisco Ballet, the film “On Golden Pond” and an upcoming movie, “The Far North,” by Sam Shepard.