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GREAT NORTHERN DIVER OR LOON. 



COLYMBTTS GLACIALIS, Linn. 

 PLATE CCCCLXXVI.— Adult Male and Young Male. 



The Loon, as this interesting species of Diver is generally called in the 

 United States, is a strong, active, and vigilant bird. When it has acquired 

 its perfect plumage, which is not altered in colour at any successive moult, 

 it is really a beautiful creature; and the student of Nature who has oppor- 

 tunities of observing its habits, cannot fail to derive much pleasure from 

 watching it as it pursues its avocations. View it as it buoyantly swims 

 over the heaving billows of the Atlantic, or as it glides along deeply 

 immersed, when apprehensive of danger, on the placid lake, on the grassy 

 islet of which its nest is placed; calculate, if you can, the speed of its flight, 

 as it shoots across the sky; mark the many plunges it performs in quest of 

 its finny food, or in eluding its enemies; list to the loud and plaintive notes 

 which it issues, either to announce its safety to its mate, or to invite some 

 traveller of its race to alight, and find repose and food; follow the anxious 

 and careful mother-bird, as she leads about her precious charge; and you 

 will not count your labour lost, for you will have watched the ways of one 

 of the wondrous creations of unlimited Power and unerring Wisdom. You 

 will find pleasure too in admiring the glossy tints of its head and neck, and 

 the singular regularity of the unnumbered spots by which its dusky back 

 and wings are checkered. 



I have met with the Great Diver, in winter, on all the water-courses of 

 the United States, whence, however, it departs when the cold becomes 

 extreme, and the surface is converted into an impenetrable sheet of ice. I 

 have seen it also along the whole of our Atlantic coast, from Maine to the 

 extremity of Florida, and from thence to the mouths of the Mississippi, and 

 the shores of Texas, about Galveston Island, where some individuals in the 

 plumage characteristic of the second moult, were observed in the month of 

 April 1S37. Indeed, as is the case with most other species of migrating 

 birds, the young remove farther south than the old individuals, which are 

 better able to withstand the cold and tempests of the wintry season. 



The migratoiy movements of this bird seem to be differently managed in 

 the spring and autumn. In the latter case, a great number of young Loons 



