102 FAMILIAR LIFE IN FIELD AND FOREST. 



tered while the bird is on the wing ; it runs thus : 

 f=,os j^ ^ Many years ago the Aveird 



*Atet£ 



^•f-^^^^--^: song was a very famihar 



Hoooo.o-o-t. /.oo-ooooo oo-o-o-o. Qjj^g ^Q jjje at the twilight 

 hour in the wilderness of the Adirondacks. I do not 

 know whether the loon to-day frequents the lakes, 

 which thirty years ago were his favorite haunts ; I 

 do not think he does. The changes in the woods are 

 radical, and civilization has introduced numberless 

 fashionable and elaborate " camps," which prove 

 most conclusively that there is less venison, trout, 

 and loon music there than there used to be in the 

 " sixties." 



The loon is a retiring character, who avoids all 

 contact with the civilized world and lives in the se- 

 clusion of the wilderness. In 18S7 Mr. Simeon Pease 

 Cheney found ample opportunity to study the loon at 

 Ti'out Lake, St. Lawrence County, N. Y., about 

 twenty-five miles northwest of Paul Smith's. Ac- 

 cording to his account, the nest of a certain loon he 

 saw was simply a cavity in some dry muck on the 

 ruins of an old muskrat house. The female, he ex- 

 plains, shoved herself on it very much as she pushed 

 herself into the water, and did not, as "Wilson says, 

 approach it on the wing by darting obliquely and 

 falling securely in it. Loons never lay more than 

 two grayish, olive-brown eggs speckled with black, 



