Last year, Lowe and fellow residents reached out to Audubon’s Maine Loon Restoration Project, hoping to reverse decades of failed nesting, which had produced just one chick since the 1980s, in 2023.

They scouted Songo by boat and chose a quiet spot to place a floating cedar-log nest — 4.5 feet square, anchored just offshore. Installed after the 2023 breeding season, the raft gave the loons time to get used to it. This spring, it was set up again.

“In mid-June, I could see they’d taken to it,” said Lowe. “With binoculars, I saw something large and white in the center.” A single egg.

Songo Pond is a tough place to raise a loon. It’s shallow, and a few days of rain can push water levels up by half a foot or more — just enough to flood a shoreline nest. Add in foxes, raccoons and minks, and the odds aren’t great. “Every one of them would love to have an egg for breakfast,” said Lowe, a retired veterinarian.

For decades, none of it worked. Then came 2023. One chick hatched and survived. “It was the first anyone on this lake had ever seen,” said Lowe. The parents, he added, “got lucky” — a cool, steady June kept water levels in check.

But luck isn’t enough, which is why Lowe, sometimes called the “Loon Ranger,” spends his summers out on the pond, talking with boaters, chatting from dock to dock.

He and his wife, Sue, host “Loon Parties” at their home, gathering neighbors and nature lovers. They bring in speakers like James Reddoch, the “Look Out for Loons” advocacy program manager and a fixture in Bethel, where people call him “that bird guy.”

When locals asked water skiers to move their slalom course farther from the nest, they did. “Those are the base hits that make a difference,” said Reddoch.

The loon restoration effort, now in its fifth and final year, was born from an environmental disaster: a 2003 oil spill in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, that killed hundreds of loons just as they were heading north to nest. A legal settlement helped fund the work in Maine, where Reddoch is contracted for 300 hours a year.

“Loons aren’t endangered,” he said, “but they’re under growing pressure.”

Loyal to their birthplaces, loons return to the same pond each year — more committed to location than to mates, scientists say. They don’t begin breeding until age five or six and raise, at most, one or two chicks a season. Parents take turns on the nest for 28 days, rarely leaving.

But the challenges keep coming. Boat wakes, abandoned fishing tackle, lead poisoning. And increasingly: boat strikes. “That’s now overtaking lead as the top killer,” said Reddoch. “The good news? Most of this is preventable.”

Stay back. Slow down. Use lead-free tackle. “Ten feet is way too close,” he said.

Last year, 22 chicks made it to the fledgling stage — 12 weeks old, strong enough to fly and head to the coast.

On July 19, more than 1,600 volunteers will take part in Maine’s annual loon count. Last year’s number: 3,100.

Back on Songo, Lowe is watching and waiting. He’s seen plenty of quiet summer evenings on the pond since moving to Albany 37 years ago. What draws him to the loons?

“There’s nothing more pleasant than the evening call of one loon to another. Especially during the nesting season if one is on the nest and one isn’t. They have that call, ‘Where are you? Here I am …”