MISQUAH — The two loon chicks on the north end of Big Pelican came through their first Fourth of July intact, riding out the holiday’s heavy boat traffic without incident — aided, in a small but real way, by a brand-new parade that, for the first time, was required to slow down.

The Fourth is ordinarily the most dangerous day of the year for loon chicks, who cannot yet dive and ride low on their parents’ backs, vulnerable to the wakes of fast boats that can swamp them or separate them from their parents. This year, the new official boat parade (see Front) ran under a strict no-wake rule along its entire Big Pelican loop — imposed partly for the dignity of the occasion and partly, organizers acknowledged without embarrassment, for the chicks.

It worked. Greta Solberg, the sixth-grade loon monitor whose project the library has certified as “actually science,” confirmed both chicks present, accounted for, and growing well after the holiday. “They’re getting big,” she reported. “They’ll be diving in a couple of weeks, and then they can look after themselves. The Fourth was the scary part. We got through the scary part.” The pair lost a chick to a snapping turtle two summers ago, a loss that still informs how closely the whole lake watches this nest.

The holiday held one anxious hour, by Solberg’s log: mid-afternoon, when the rental traffic peaked and a pontoon idled long past the buoys before a neighboring boat — she declined to identify it beyond “somebody’s grandpa” — performed a slow, corrective circle that communicated the local position wordlessly and completely. At Loon Ridge, general manager Renée Fontaine reported the marina’s reminder cards “taken, read, and mostly heeded,” which she rates a strong result for cards. And the arithmetic has moved the right way: last June’s Chain-wide count of twelve adults and three chicks reads, this summer, fourteen and five — the kind of small increase the volunteers’ spiral notebook exists to catch.

The Department of Natural Resources reminded boaters that the no-wake courtesy extended to the chicks on parade day need not be confined to parade day, and that the marked zones near the nesting area remain in force through midsummer. The loons, asked for comment on a parade staged partly for their benefit, did precisely what loons do, which is decline to acknowledge that any of it had ever been about them.