Star Tribune
Normally loners, loons are converging on northern Minnesota lakes to fuel up for migration
Peter Jacobson was studying a particular kind of oily white fish when he started noticing the loons. The birds, which in Minnesota are almost only ever seen in pairs or small family units, were gathering by the dozens, forming groups of more than 100 on a handful of Minnesota’s deepest and clearest lakes.
The loons didn’t spend much time in shallow waters, Jacobson noticed. They rafted together over the deepest parts of the lakes — directly over the schools of cisco that the now-retired fisheries expert for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources was studying.
“That raised my suspicion,” Jacobson said.
He spoke with Kevin Kenow, a loon expert with U.S. Geological Survey. Kenow led a study published this spring that confirmed Jacobson’s hunch: Loons start to converge in the late summer on Minnesota’s cisco lakes, just before their migration. They give up fighting each other for territory and prey, and fish as a group. And what they primarily fish for is cisco.
“They are a grade A forage fish,” Jacobson said. “They’re high-energy, high-fat, very oily, so it made sense that loons would want to go after them before they migrate.”
The annual phenomenon typically begins in late August. Loons show up in pairs or alone, building up larger and larger numbers on waters such as Upper and Lower Whitefish lakes, on Lower Hay and Kabekona lakes, on Ten Mile Lake and dozens of others across central and northern Minnesota.
Adult loons will continue gathering on the lakes until they leave the state in early October.
Cooperation can seem like odd behavior for the highly territorial birds, who spend so much of their time in spring and summer alone with their mate and offspring. But now is the time they need to focus on a common goal — building up energy for their trek to southern Florida, Kenow said.
“It seems like finding the school of cisco and keeping up with it is easier to do with a larger number of birds foraging together,” Kenow said.
While cisco are rarely sought out by anglers, they have long been known to have an outsized impact on the quality of fishing in Minnesota. The state historically had about 650 cisco lakes. The DNR expects that to fall to fewer than 200. Rising temperatures, less ice coverage and more nutrients from agricultural runoff are starving many of the state’s lakes of oxygen, killing off cold-water loving fish like cisco and lake trout.
Those lakes that still have cisco also have bigger, stronger and healthier walleye, muskie and lake trout populations.
Cisco, the new study shows, are highly beneficial to the state’s most beloved bird as well.
The seasonal phenomenon also sheds new light on one of the strangest migration paths of any Minnesota animal. Soon, adult loons will depart the state’s cisco lakes, leaving their young offspring behind. The adults will head to Lake Michigan, where they will gather by the thousands with other loons from Canada and the Upper Midwest. They’ll spend about 28 days on the Great Lake, feasting on invasive round gobies and other small fish, Kenow said.
Then they’ll shoot off together for their wintering grounds either on the Gulf of Mexico or Florida’s Atlantic coast.
Young loons will stay in the lakes where they were born.
While their parents pack on needed calories on Lake Michigan, the juveniles get their first chance to enjoy a lake to themselves. They seem to know those waters well enough by then to forage on their own, Kenow said.
Then something will click, right around November in the yearling birds. Nobody teaches them where to fly, but they all head straight for southern Florida.
“I’ve radio marked loon chicks that were 10 weeks old and I was able to see their location every morning,” Kenow said. “I felt like a dad waiting for his teenagers to come home at night. It was getting into November and they weren’t leaving.”
Finally, just before the lake iced over, the young birds left.
“It’s just innate,” he said. “They have this compass bearing in mind and that’s what they seem to follow.”
In spring, the adults will try to return to the same lake where they raised their young the last year. The juveniles, however, will typically fan out across great distances to find breeding lakes of their own and those born in Minnesota may never return.
Two people from Minnetonka were killed late Friday afternoon when their GMC Suburban ran a stop sign and was struck by a GMC Yukon headed north on Hwy. 169 west of Palisade, Minn.
According to the State Patrol, Marlo Dean Baldwin, 92, and Elizabeth Jane Baldwin, 61, were dead at the scene. The driver of the Suburban, a 61-year-old Minnetonka man, was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries.
The Suburban, pulling a trailer, was headed east on Grove Street/County Rd. 3 at about 5:15 p.m. when it failed to stop at Hwy. 169 and was struck by the northbound Yukon. The Yukon then struck two westbound vehicles stopped at the intersection.
Four people from Zimmerman, Minn., in the Yukon, including the driver, were taken to HCMC with life-threatening injuries, while two passengers were treated for non-life-threatening injuries. Three girls in the Yukon ranged in age from 11 to 15.
The drivers of the two vehicles struck by the Yukon were not injured, the State Patrol said. Road conditions were dry at the time of the accident, and alcohol was not believed to have been a factor. All involved in the accident were wearing a seat belt except for Elizabeth Baldwin.
Hill City police and the Aitkin County Sheriff’s Office assisted at the scene.
Amid the cacophony and chaos of the pregame preparation before a recent Minnetonka High School football game, an exceptional group of six girls is gathered together among the school’s deep and talented cheerleading and dance teams.
The cheerleaders, a national championship-winning program of 40 girls, dot the track around the football field. As the clock ticks down to kickoff and their night of choreographed routines begins, the six girls, proudly wearing Minnetonka blue T-shirts emblazoned with “Skippers Nation” and shaking shiny pom-poms, swirl around the track, bristling with excited energy.
Their circumstances are no different from any of the other cheerleaders with one notable exception: The girls on this team have special needs.
They’re members of the Minnetonka Sparklers, a squad of cheerleaders made up solely of girls with special needs.
A football game at Minnetonka High School is an elaborate production. The Skippers’ recent homecoming victory over Shakopee brought an announced crowd of 8,145. And that is just paying attendees; it doesn’t include school staffers, coaches, dance team, marching band, concession workers, media members and others going about their business attached to the game.
The Sparklers program, now in its 12th season, was the brainchild of Marcy Adams, a former Minnetonka cheerleader who initiated the program in her senior year of high school. Adams has been coach of the team since its inception, staying on through her tenure as a cheerleader at the University of Minnesota.
She started the program after experiencing the Unified Sports program at Minnetonka. The unified sports movement at high schools brings together student-athletes with cognitive or physical disabilities and athletes with no disabilities to foster relationships, understanding and compassion through athletics. Many Minnesota schools offer unified sports.
“I grew up in a household that valued students with special needs and valued inclusion,” Adams said. “I saw a need to give to those students. At Minnetonka, we have a strong Unified program, and this was a great opportunity to build relationships and offer mentorship opportunities.”
Elite runners are in a league of their own.
To get a sense of how far ahead elite runners are compared to the rest of us, the Minnesota Star Tribune took a look at how their times compare to the average marathon participant.
The 2022 Twin Cities Marathon men’s winner was Japanese competitor Yuya Yoshida, who ran the marathon in a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes and 28 seconds, for an average speed of 11.96 mph. He averaged 5 minutes and 2 seconds per mile.
That’s more than twice the speed of the average competitor across both the men’s and women’s categories, of 5.89 mph, according to race results site Mtec. The average participant finished in 4 hours, 26 minutes and 56 seconds. That comes out to an average time of 10 minutes and 11 seconds per mile.
And taking it to the most extreme, the fastest-ever marathon runner, Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya, finished the 2023 Chicago Marathon in 2 hours and 35 seconds, for an average pace of about 13 mph. Kiptum averaged 4 minutes and 36 seconds per mile.
Here is a graphic showing these differences in average marathon speed.
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