The common loon

This year I spent my holidays in northern Canada, Ontario. There’s not much to say, we were somewhere in nowhere in the bush and it was beautiful! There was no noise, only the wind in the trees and the sad call of common loons over the lake. And that was the main event for me: loons! These birds are so magnificent, I could watch them forever. More info, a lot of pictures and even a self made movie under the cut!

Yeah I know: again a bird, again water fowl – I’m sorry! But look at these beautiful big birds! They are huge, about 70cm long and their wingspan is over one meter! If you see them swim, you would never expect such a big bird, because their lower body submerges deep into the water when swimming.
Common loons (Gavia immer) use to dive after fish, frogs, crabs or/and mussels. Like the cormorant they are able to dive about ten meters into the deep. In Ontario they swam near the shoreline, because there were a lot of tiny baby fishes.
There’s always only one loon pair per lake and our pair had a baby chicken! YAY! So cute OMG I die!!! It looks like a fluffy chocolate cookie – ready to eat. Both male and female take care about their offspring and the little babies make cute noises. We were very gifted to see loons with a baby. I hope it will survive and grow to be an adult.

The common loon is the national bird of Canada, especially of Ontario. That bird is printed on the one Dollar coins and so they are called loonies.

Like the great crested grebe, also a diver bird, the loons carry their offspring on their backs, too. But I didn’t see such a scene there.



Unfortunately I don’t own a loon skull and I didn’t find any loon feathers. Sigh… Maybe next time.