76 LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN DIVING BIRDS 



The young are experts at swimming and diving ; they are soon taught 

 to hide among the vegetation while their parents draw attention to 

 themselves by flying excitedly over the pond or swimming in circles 

 a short distance from the shore. Mr. Edward A. Preble (1908) 

 noted that 



when the nesting pond was approached, the male usually flew away, but the 

 female invariably refused to leave her offspring, and if absent soon appeared 

 and alighted beside them, diving, swimming about, and encouraging them in 

 their efforts to escape, and endeavoring to attract the attention of the intruder 

 to herself. The old birds fished in the lake near by and were often seen carry- 

 ing small fishes to the young. 



Nelson (1887) says: 



The young are led to the streams, large lakes, or sea-coast as soon as they are 

 able to follow the parents, and they fall easy victims to the hunter until, with 

 the growth of the quill feathers, they attain some of the wisdom of their par- 

 ents. The end of August sees all upon the wing, except now and then a late 

 bird, and from September 15 to 30 they gradually become more and more 

 scarce, until only a very few can be found the first of October. 



Plumages. The young loon when first hatched is completely cov- 

 ered with short, thick, dark brown down, "seal brown" above, shad- 

 ing gradually to "drab" below. As it increases in size these colors 

 become paler, particularly on the under parts, which fade out to 

 "light drab" or "ecru drab" on the belly and to dark walnut 

 brown" above. A series of young red-throated loons, collected by 

 Turner in Ungava, shows that their development is very slow. A 

 young bird, collected July 30, was evidently hatched very early, but 

 it is still wholly downy, although nearly half grown, and the wing 

 quills are only just started. Another, collected September 19, is in 

 the juvenal plumage and fully grown, but there is still some down 

 on the flanks and hind neck. Turner states in his notes that this 

 bird "would not have been able to sustain flight for fully another 

 month." Evidently, as in the ducks, the body plumage is fully ac- 

 quired and the last of the down has disappeared from the flanks long 

 before the primaries are grown and the flight stage is reached. 



In the juvenal plumage the head and neck are mottled with 

 "mouse gray" and dirty white, the gray predominating on the 

 crown and throat; the upper parts are dusky, mottled on the back 

 and wings with "drab-gray" spots or V-shaped markings; these 

 markings are much larger and more decidedly V shaped on the 

 scapulars, becoming smaller and more broken up into rounded spots 

 on the back. This plumage is worn without any very decided change 

 throughout the winter; there is considerable individual variation in 

 the size, shape and arrangement of the markings; but as a rule the 

 gray mottling gradually disappears from the throat and the mark- 

 ings on the upper parts become whiter, smaller and more rounded, as 

 the season advances. The V-shaped markings, however, are charac- 



