MIGRATION . 
129 
into the lake’s waters. His shrill laughter is 
taken up by all the mocking forests, and his 
deep and prolonged diving carries consternation 
to bass and pickerel. Restlessly he plows the 
ruffled water with his broad breast, and now 
and then he pounds the waves with his wings, 
raising his head high above them. When he 
flies, the water is churned into foam for many 
yards before his unwieldy body is finally raised 
into the air and placed under the full control 
of his powerful wings. Then he rises little by 
little, his wings moving faster and faster, until, 
after .progressing half a mile, he has risen two 
or three hundred feet. Turning, he comes back, 
still rising, and passes in review the lake and 
forests which he is to leave. Again and again 
he tacks, on each new line rising farther from 
the earth, until at last, seen against the sky, he 
is but a pair of swiftly whirling wings set 
strangely far back on the long black line of his 
head, neck, and body. It is said that hunters 
have been killed by being struck by falling loons 
* shot by them on the wing. 
Occasionally a stray sea-bird comes to the 
mountain lakes. Herring gulls have been seen 
on Chocorua Pond, a Wilson’s tern was shot on 
August 30, 1890, on Ossipee Lake, and a year 
earlier, on September 30, a black tern remained 
half a day on my lonely lake. 
