AMONG THE REEDS AND RUSHES. 11 



Though there are several species of loons in North America, 

 only one is common in the United States, and this one varies 

 so much in color with age and the season that we might easily 

 suppose that we had seen two kinds of loons. Young and 

 winter birds are gray above, indistinctly spotted, and the white 

 of the breast runs up to the chin, while the head and neck are 

 no darker than the back. The " gray loon " of the fishermen 

 is a smaller species, the red-throated diver, which lives farther 

 north, and comes as a winter visitor to the seacoast of the 

 United States. 



If you ever get well acquainted with the loons you will 

 always be wondering whether they are the jolliest people 

 afloat, or the most lonesome maniacs that ever lived outside an 

 asylum. Sometimes they have little parties with races run 

 from a given starting-point to a set goal. Great is the shout- 

 ing and clamor as they run on the water, feet and wings both 

 helping, each one plainly doing his best to get first to the win- 

 ning |)ost an imaginary post of course, but it will be noticed 

 that all stop at just the same point. Then they put their 

 heads together and talk it over with merry ha-ha-has and 

 chucklings that set the observer to laughing too, and all 

 swim slowly back to the starting-point to run once more. 



Often when alone the loon laughs to himself, and often, lift- 

 ing his head, he gives his long, wild call " not his laughter, 

 but his looning," as Thoreau puts it in his book on the "Maine 

 Woods." Except when he is at play with others the loon's 

 heart never seems to be in his laughter; and you wonder if this 

 terrible crazy yell, hollow, mad, and meaningless, echoed back 

 by the woods and mountains that surround the lake, does not 

 better tell you what a desperately lonesome and demented 

 creature he is. " As crazy as a loon " is a current Northern 

 saying. Yet of all the mad noises the bird can make, nothing 



