UNUSUAL EXPERIENCES AFIELD 119 



usual for them I might add the loon. Early one 

 spring while working beside the Wabash River I 

 was amazed to see a loon swimming toward me. 

 I examined him carefully to make sure of my 

 identification, but there was no mistaking his 

 pointed beak, white band around his throat, and 

 his extreme agility in the water. I imagined that 

 he had alighted from a flock in migration for a 

 drink or to feed upon the bank. As I never had 

 seen a loon in flight I tried to make him take wing, 

 but he swam steadily with the current, all the 

 time coming closer to me. At the wildest demon- 

 stration I could make he dived and very shortly 

 came to the surface quite a distance below me. 

 Then I took a straight cut across a bend in the 

 river bank so that I should once more be in front of 

 him. When he approached me the second time, 

 from what I hoped was concealment, I threw a stick 

 into the water directly in front of him, counting 

 surely on this forcing him to flight. At the splash 

 so near him, he drew back, seeming to rise on his 

 feet on the water, lifted his wings, then instantly 

 folded them, plunging forward and diving again; 

 but in the flash I was quite sure that something 

 was wrong with one of his wings. The next morn- 

 ing, I noticed among the local items of a daily 

 paper published in the first town of any size on 

 the river that a hunter had shot a loon which he 

 found on the river unable to fly because of a 

 damaged wing. Then I thought that the bird 



