ALBANY TOWNSHIP — What started as anticipation for the birth of just the second loon chick to hatch on Songo Pond in the past 40 years turned into double the excitement this past weekend when two chicks arrived.

Last week, loon advocate Bill Lowe said using binoculars he had spotted one egg on the Audubon Society’s artificial nest. Lowe and the Audubon’s Maine Loon Restoration Project had hoped to reverse decades of failed nesting, which had produced just one chick since the 1980s, in 2023.

But to his surprise, by Sunday, not one but two loon chicks had hatched.

At first, Lowe saw a tiny chick with one adult while the other adult remained on the raft.

“This was odd,” said Lowe, a retired veterinarian, “because the pair abandons the nest after the egg hatches.”

The following morning, Lowe discovered why one parent had stayed behind — there was a second chick in the nest.

Songo Pond, with its dramatic water level changes, has long been a difficult place to raise a loon chick. 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 5 or 6 and raise, at most, one or two chicks a season. Parents take turns on the nest for 28 days, rarely leaving.

“There’s nothing more pleasant than the evening call of one loon to another,” Lowe said last week. “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 …”