562 



Report of State Geologist. 



streaks on each side of the neck, and one on the throat; below, wliite; 

 bill, black. Immature. — Above, dark gray, feathers edged with paler; 

 below, white, dusky on the sides; bill, yellowish green and dusky. 



Length, 28.00-36.00; wing, 13.00-15.25; bill, 2.75-3.50. 



Eange. — Northern part Northern Hemisphere; in America, south 

 to Gulf of Mexico. Breeds from Indiana, Minnesota and northern 

 New England northward. 



Nest, a depression in the ground near the water, sometimes lined 

 with grass and weeds. Eggs, 2-3, brownish, spotted and blotched with 

 darker brown. 



The Loon is a regular migrant throughout the State in some num- 

 bers. They sometimes remain through the winter, but most of them 

 do not. Mr. J. W. Byrkit informs me that they are permanent resi- 

 dents in Laporte County. He says they are sometimes caught by 

 fishermen on Lake Michigan, near Michigan City, Indiana, "in gill 

 nets and on hooks in thirty fathoms of water." In the Whitewater 

 Valley I have never found them except in April. That seems to be 

 the month of their principal spring migration, though in the northern 

 part of the State the advance guard makes itself noticeable in some 

 numbers a month earlier. The movement southward begins in Sep- 

 tember, rarely August, and continues through November. Mr. J. E. 

 Beasley reports two specimens from Boone County August 25. Hon. 

 R. Wes. McBride says (Proc. Indiana Academy of Science, 1891, pp. 

 166-7): "It is a summer resident of Steuben County, and breeds in at 

 least two of the many beautiful lakes in that county. Their eggs have 

 been taken at Lake James and Crooked Lake. I have been familiar 

 with those lakes for more than twenty years, and have never failed to 

 find them there in summer. I have also seen them in the breeding 

 season in Hamilton Lake and Golden Lake, also in Steuben County; 



