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GREAT NORTHERN DIVER OR LOON. 
COLYMBUS GLACIALIS, Linn. 
PLATE CCCCLXXYI. — 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, 1887- 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 migratory movements of this bird seem to be differently managed in 
the spring and autumn. In the latter case, a great number of young Loons 
