Common Loon (Gavia immer)

I was totally thrilled to see a Common Loon while walking around Jordan Pond in Maine’s Acadia National Park. I would have cavalierly passed by if not for a family who pointed it out to my husband and I. The family had been photographing the loon for three hours, trying to capture an elusive image. The above image is one of Jordan Pond. Although I didn’t hear its eerie call, I was excited enough just to see it in summer plumage, with its dramatic white and black checked back, sailing upright and magnificent. I’ve always wanted to see a Common Loon, and had no idea I would see it on a “pond” (what we in Colorado would call a lake) in Maine. Common Loons are made for diving in pursuit of fish. Adaptations such as setback legs and—unusual among birds—heavy, solid bones, allow them to do things like flip-flop underwater and make them excellent at what they do. But these same traits make flight, or at least take off, challenging. Loons can get landlocked if they don’t find the thirty yards or up to a quarter of a mile they need to build up speed. Unfortunately, patches of dark, wet pavement and small ponds can act as traps, deceiving the birds into believing they’ve found sufficiently large bodies of water. The Common Loon is no sluggard when aloft, though, and has been clocked migrating at up to 70 m.p.h. The loon made me think a lot about the mechanics of flying on our flight home—how much propulsion a plane has to have to lift all of that weight into the air and especially about landing—how the plane has to slow, yet maintain a certain speed so it won’t fall out of the air. (For a technical description of the four elements of flight, see this site.) My favorite fact about the loon, though, is that two adults and their two offspring can eat up to half-ton of fish in fifteen weeks.