Have you ever seen a loon in Berkshire County? This team is working to make sure, someday, we all say 'yes'

OTIS — Stay quiet. No sudden moves. It shouldn't even know you're here.

Thomas Gregg kayaks through the reservoir toward a marshy island. No other humans in sight. “You’ve got to woo the loon,” he says.

Gregg paddles a bit, then pauses for a closer look through binoculars. On an early July day, Thomas Gregg scoped out loons in an Otis lake. He scans the shoreline ahead.

Nothing yet. Binoculars drop. Back to paddling.

“I’ve got to play it cool,” Gregg, a loon biologist, says. “It’s a very finesse-based game.” But he's getting closer.

“If the loon is aware they’re being pursued, they’re never going to relax,” Gregg says. He paddles ahead. “And if her chin moves her neck forward and down” — he demonstrates like this, forward and down — “it’s time to go.

” Closer, still. And — right there, do you see it? — up pops a head from a stand of cattails: a loon. The bird, aware but unbothered, peers back.

It's an uncommon sighting in this part of New England. This loon and its mate are one of only 50 known pairs in Massachusetts. From May to November, five days a week, Gregg paddles lakes and ponds in Berkshire County to observe, track and collect data on loon behavior.

Each week, he reports his findings to Biodiversity Research Institute, a Maine-based nonprofit. The Institute, part of the United Nations Global Compact, leads conservation efforts across 40 countries. And part of that work is a collaboration with Massachusetts’ Division of F.