"Lead Poisoning Killing Loons, Necropsies Show"

"NORTH GRAFTON, Mass. -- A loon was beached on Cobbossee Lake in Winthrop, Maine, a maggot-filled wing wound keeping it from flying or resisting capture from a game warden."

"The gash was too deep and the skin around it too decayed to save the agonized, emaciated bird. It was euthanized at an avian clinic in Freedom, Maine.

Enter Mark Pokras, whose job it is to figure out why the bird was disabled in the first place."

Michael Shepherd reports for the Portland Press Herald September 2, 2013.