200 WOOD NOTES WILD. 



L,00n. (Seep. 95.) 



Note : " 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 confirm your supposition that the loon does use 

 its wings under water. I was born in Harrison, Cumberland 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, Grinfill, 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 Owl. 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-to-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. 



