Every summer, hundreds of volunteers help count Vermont’s loons. They keep tabs on nests, chicks and mating pairs at their favorite lakes, and they send their reports in letters and voicemails and emails to one person: Eric Hanson.
Since 1988, he’s been the lead biologist for the Vermont Loon Conservation Project.
It takes Hanson hours and hours to sort that information and put it into spreadsheets. That’s changing this summer, thanks to a new app the program is piloting called LoonWeb.
On a recent canoe excursion to Great Hosmer Pond in Craftsbury, Hanson paddled about 200 feet from a nest tucked between the reeds on a floating marsh. A black head poked just above the shrubbery.
“Loons can't walk on land, so they need to be right next to the shore for a quick exit in case there was some threat, whether it's a person or an eagle,” he said. “Loons feel totally safe in the water, but when they're sitting on a nest, that's when they're most vulnerable.”
From there in the canoe, he pulled out his iPhone and logged all sorts of data about what he saw in the LoonWeb app.
“This bird is actually in a very relaxed position,” Hanson said. “The head's upright, the bill’s horizontal.”
The whole process took him about 45 seconds, automatically recorded his location using GPS and didn’t require cell service.
Hanson is hopeful other people will be able to share data the same way when they see a loon on their favorite lake.
Vermont Center for Ecostudies received about $30,000 to develop the LoonWeb app from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as part of a settlement related to an oil spill.
In 2003, a barge ran aground off the coast of Massachusetts, dumping 98,000 gallons of oil into the ocean and killing at least 500 loons, many of which spent time on inland waterways in northern New England like Great Hosmer Pond.
These ancient birds have traveled to Vermont lakes and ponds in the summer to nest and rear their chicks for millions of years. They’ve been here longer than songbirds.
They spend their winters and much of their adolescence on the northern Atlantic coast.
Loons were rare in Vermont as recently as the 1990s, but they’ve made a remarkable recovery, and in 2025, volunteers counted a record number of loon chicks surviving the summer.
Despite these gains, Hanson says loons face new and growing threats in the Northeast. Climate change is bringing more extreme rain events to the region, which can flood shoreline nests and make lakes and ponds too turbid for the ancient diving birds to hunt for fish.
PFAS, or so-called “forever chemicals,” are also increasingly present in Vermont’s waterways. The compounds have been shown to disrupt hormones in people, and Hanson would like to know if they disrupt loon reproduction, too.
All of this is the sort of research he might take on now that LoonWeb is expected to save him two days a week of being at his desk, logging data.
For those looking to volunteer to count loons this summer, Hanson says loons in Vermont typically nest in early-mid summer, and people should be especially careful not to disturb them while they’re hatching chicks.
“If you're a little too close, then they do what we call ‘the hangover position,’ with the head extended and the bill down low. It's trying to hide from you, so that's a sign that you should back up, get a little further away next time.”
Generally he says, staying about 200 feet away from a nest is a good idea.
Maine Audubon is also piloting the LoonWeb app this summer. And if it proves successful, Hanson says it could be deployed by citizen science efforts all over the country to create a national and easily accessible database of North America’s loon populations.
You can learn more about how to volunteer here.
