While out monitoring the loons of Squam Lake, I sometimes feel like I am watching a soap opera.  Having 13 banded loons on Squam allows me to follow some of these individuals and the triumphs and tragedies of their lives...not to mention their "marriages" and "divorces." 

Sturtevant Cove has been the center of a particularly compelling soap opera over the past two years.  Everything was peaceful between 2008-2009, when the same pair returned to nest.  However, in good soap opera fashion, 2009 brought chaos, upheaval, murder, and divorce.  Two days after hatching two chicks, all was peaceful within Sturtevant Cove, with the father brooding the chicks and carrying them on his back and the mother feeding the chicks.  Suddenly, a second male loon came into the cove.  The father immediately set out to confront the intruder, leaving the chicks with the mother.  He seemingly succeeded in driving the intruder out, amid much yodeling and wing rowing.  But an hour later, the intruder was back and resumed his attack on the territorial male until he had driven him off.  In keeping with loon notions of how to best take over a territory and weaken a pair bond, he then killed both chicks.  The male survived, but the intruder had succeeded.  The chicks were dead, the father defeated, and the following weeks saw the female associating with an unbanded male in Sturtevant Cove (likely the intruding loon).  After spending a few days with the Kimball Island female, the former territorial male settled for the remainder of the field season with the female of the Yard Islands-another territory suffering from intrusions in 2009.