200 WOOD NOTES WILD. 



LiOOn. {See p. 95.) 



Ilote : " Celia Thaxter says, ' Loons seem to me the 

 most human and at the same time the most demoniac 

 of their kind. . . . Their long, wild, melancholy cry be- 

 fore a storm is the most awful note I have ever heard 

 from a bird. It is so sad, so hopeless, — a shudder of 

 sound.'" — c, S. P. 



There can be no doubt that the loon flies under water, 

 as does the murre or guillemot, a bird of the same family 

 as the auk. 



"I have just read your article in the November 'Century' on the loon, 

 and venture to write to coulinu your supposition that the loon does use 

 its wings under water. I was born in Harrison, Cumberlaud County, 

 Maine, at the head of Long Lake; and one bright summer morning I 

 ■was standing on the top of the cabin of a canal-boat that was being 

 slowly ' poled '' along the shore of the lake where the water was some 

 ten feet deep with a sandy bottom. The lake was calm and the water 

 very clear. A loon that was swimming some distance from the boat 

 dove, and in a moment I saw him passing within about twenty feet of 

 the boat and about three feet under water. His wings were in rapid 

 motion, the same as if in the air; and he moved very swiftly. For the 

 first time I was able to understand how they could go so far under 

 ■water in so short a time. This was thirty-five years ago, and I was about 

 fifteen years old. I have never met any one else who has seen a loon 

 fly under water. My eyesight was remarkably good at the time, and I 

 am sure I could not have been mistaken." — Blake, GrinflU, in a letter to 

 the author, dated February, 1888 (New Brunswick, N. J.). 



See under Loon, White, Rev. G. : Nat. Hist, of Selborne. 



Great Horned 0-*vl. — Harmony. (See p. 98.) 

 •' Did you ever hear harmony produced by bird-notes ? Thanksgiving 

 I took a horseback trip to Mount Diablo. As I lay awake in camp, to- 

 wards morning a great horned owl began to hoot in its deep and not un- 

 musical tones, hoo-hoo, hoo-io-hoo. Soon another began to call hard by, but 

 not on the same tone ; there was one tone between them. The most sin- 

 gular effect was produced when the two birds hooted together, as they 

 did several times. It was a perfect chord of the third." — Keeler, C. A., 

 in a note dated Dec. 16, 1890. 



