J. Cassidy — The Birds of Canada 255


The Loon


The Loon Family, Gavidas, includes the Common Loon, the

Yellow-billed Loon, the Arctic Loon, and the Ked-throated Loon.


The Common Loon is a great plunger. Probably few people who

know well the waterways and lakes of Canada have missed the loud

laugh of the Loon, or the strange wild notes that it gives forth at

times. Up, up, up goes the initial note, then a fall, sudden and

unexpected.


The Loon is a great weather-prophet. Sometimes, perhaps at night,

before the coming of a storm the Loons call to each other and seem

to utter warnings, maybe comments, on the approaching disturbances.

Here is a precise description of the bird, given by that Prince of

Ornithologists, P. A. Taverner, to whose book we have already directed

attention, as published by Messrs. Musson, of Toronto. He writes :

“ The Loons are large divers, with straight, sharply-pointed bills and

with the feet fully webbed. In the adult state they are coloured in

strikingly contrasting patterns, mostly black and white. They are

larger than Ducks and with shorter necks than Geese ; tails more

evident than in the Grebes (near relatives of the Loons) ; their size,

length of neck and bill, the trailing feet behind the tail, are reliable

field marks. They nest on low shores in the immediate vicinity of

water where they can dive almost directly from the nest.”


It is one thing to dive, but quite another to rise from the water.

The Grebes can do both easily, but although the Loon is a better diver

than the Grebe it certainly rises far less easily from the water. A

good breeze helps the Loon over the surface of the water and prevents

the long splashing start which otherwise they seem to require before

becoming wing-borne.


The food of the Loon consists of small fish, but as only few Loons

are found in any one locality they cannot be blamed for economic

consequences.


The Loons do not like to have neighbours too close to them. Their

method of driving away such is curious. To free their immediate

neighbourhood from Ducks, Coots, and similar water birds they

attack from under water, harassing the unwelcome neighbours until

they quit to escape the trouble. As though to make up for this



