WCSH-TV6 • July 17, 2023
Hodgdon Island isn’t large, but for the Lund family, it has been the center of summer for more than 80 years. And from their island camp on Cobbosseecontee Lake–known locally as Cobbossee—they have watched the loon population grow. "They were rare," family patriarch Jon Lund said, who began spending summer on the lake when his family moved to the Augusta area in the mid-1930s. The loon population has gone up throughout southern Maine, where Maine Audubon has been doing an annual volunteer loon count for the past 40 years. The 2022 count totaled 3,057 loons in the southern half of Maine. The Lund family—Jon, son Alfred, grandson Nick, and great-grandson Elliot—all share a passion for the birds, and say they spend many hours on and around the lake, watching them.