54 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



and their half-extended wings for partial support. Starting 

 all together they race down the lake, and then, turning, rush 

 back to their starting point. Such exercises no doubt 

 strengthen the young birds for the long flights to come. 



The Loon finds some diflBculty in rising from the water, 

 and is obliged to run along the surface, flapping its short 

 wings, until it gets impetus enough to rise. It is said that it 

 cannot rise at all unless there is wind to assist it. Its great 

 weight (from eight to nearly twelve pounds) and its short 

 wings make flight laborious, but its rapid wing beats carry it 

 through the air at great speed. Mr. R. M. Barnes states that 

 one warm sunny afternoon, about 5 o'clock, on the flooded 

 bottom of the Illinois River he saw a Loon rising from the 

 water in a great circle, flapping its wings and then sailing. It 

 circled much after the fashion of a Bald Eagle, rising higher 

 and higher, continuing its flapping movements, alternated 

 by sailing, until it reached a great altitude. When it had 

 attained a height at which it appeared but little larger than a 

 blackbird, it set its wings, and, pointing its long neck toward 

 the pole, sailed away with great rapidity. He watched the 

 bird with the glass until it passed out of sight, and could see 

 no movement of the wings, although it was travelling at a tre- 

 mendous rate. He believes that the bird was coasting down 

 the air.^ The ordinary migrating flight of the Loon is swift 

 and steady, accompanied by rapid, powerful wing beats, and I 

 have never witnessed anything like the performance described 

 by Mr. Barnes. When it alights it often shoots spirally down 

 from a great height, and plunges into the water like an arrow 

 from a bow. It lands with a splash, and shoots along the 

 surface until its impetus is arrested by the resistance of the 

 water. 



The Loon is almost unexcelled as a diver. It is supposed 

 to be able to disappear so suddenly at the flash of a rifle as to 

 dodge the bullet, unless the shooter is at point-blank range, 

 but when two or three crack shots surround a small pond in 

 which a Loon is resting it can usually be secured by good 

 strategy. I once saw a Loon killed on the water with a shot- 



1 Osprey, Vol. I, No. 6, February, 1897. 



