BY JENN McDOWELL

The Rockwoods have completely reinvented themselves, undergoing extreme career changes and finding new love with the loons.

John and Sue Rockwood, both in their fifties, have found a way to get paid for what they love, something everyone ultimately aims for.

John Rockwood, 54, was laid off from his job as a software programmer in 2001. He went back to school to learn Web-based programming languages and further his career, but he wasn’t having luck in the job market.

“I’d send out resumes or go on interviews, and they’d see you’re over 40,” he said.

For two years off and on, he applied to companies and worked part time.

The other part of his time was devoted to kayaking on Lake Massabesic and taking photographs.

“I was just trying to escape the hassles of being rejected,” he said.

He became particularly interested in the loons he had seen on the lake, and began taking close shots of them, one of which won him first prize in a town photo contest, “Images of Auburn.”

Sue Rockwood, 53, was a teacher at the time, and said it was then the Rockwoods realized that John’s talent and affinity for loons could provide their income.

They began sending his photos to nature magazines such as “Birds and Bloom” and “Nature New England Magazine.”

They also began selling loon photos in the gift shop of the town’s Loon Preservation Center. Eventually, he started helping the center with their research through his photography.

John Rockwood started providing the center with a very personal look at loons. He tracks loons, particularly their young, and reports his findings to the center.

He also does slide shows at the center and at assisted living homes in the area, lecturing about loons and other wildlife he’s captured in his camera lens.

Sue Rockwood said those who are still able-minded appreciate his windows to the world.

“How often do they get to know what they’re missing in their world now?” she said.

John Rockwood has gotten uniquely close to the loons, who are extremely territorial and considered a threatened species in the state. He’s been able to get shots of loons nesting and has gotten close-up shots of their chicks.

“The loons became friendly, per se,” he said, adding that they come right up to his kayak while he paddles
through the water.

He also helped construct a floating nest raft, which would rise and fall with the water level so the loon’s nest would not be ruined as the water rises.

“We filled it with the materials the loon would normally use,” John Rockwood said, including twigs and mud. It even has a screen over the top so predators, namely eagles, cannot snatch the chicks from the nest.

There are about six to eight pairs of loons on Lake Massabesic, he said, but none of them have used the nest in the three years it’s been attempted.

He can talk endlessly about loons and what he’s discovered about them, and he’s even proved scientists wrong.

For example, it was commonly thought in the field that loons mated for life. He found out that wasn’t true.

“If the nesting for that season is not successful, the female will go off and find another male,” he said, adding, “I like to argue with the biologists if I see something in writing I know is not true. There are still things they’re finding out.”

The Rockwoods make a good living off of the photo sales, slide shows and research, and both contribute to the career – Sue Rockwood having quit her teaching job to become her husband’s  public relations and marketing assistant of sorts.

“It was time for a change for me, too,” she said, adding that the hardest part of making the career change for her and her husband was realizing the time had come to do it or not.

“It’s getting your head around this was your life, it’s not anymore, what are you going to do with it?” she asked.