November, 2002

Nature’s World:  COMMON LOONS

by Susan Tweit

When I tell people that I’m a nature writer, they often respond with the tale of a favorite nature experience. One that I heard recently was just too magical—and too surprising to me—to keep to myself.

Back in mid-September, when Buena Vista resident Garry Rudd was working at Browns Lake, up above Creede, he rose one morning before dawn to listen to the sounds and watch the sun rise. Rudd made himself some coffee, and found a comfortable place to sit overlooking the lake. A thick mist rising off the water, he says, obscured the lake. But pretty soon he heard something: a throaty, stuttering call that rose at the end like maniacal laughter. A common loon.

The loon’s raise-the-hair-on-your-neck call echoed off the rock walls above the lakes (Browns Lake is really a series of small lakes, says Rudd, like a chain of beaver ponds), and bounced back and forth until it died away. Then another call and its reverberating echoes split the pre-dawn stillness, and, as if in answer, a response from farther up the lakes.

Rudd says that he sat and listened to call, echoes, and counter-call for nearly two hours before the birds fell silent. So absorbed was he by the magic of the loon voices echoing in the mist that he drank too much coffee and paid for it later by getting the jitters!

I think of common loons as birds of the North Country, nesting on lakes and tundra ponds from New England, the northern Midwest, and southern British Columbia north to the arctic treeline. In my mind, the wild laughter of loons’ calling is associated with the peaty smell of spruce muskeg—and the whine of clouds of mosquitoes thick as swarms of locusts. 

I hadn’t pictured common loons here in the southern Rockies. But according to Colorado Birds, these big waterfowl stop over on reservoirs and mountain lakes in the state on their fall migration, headed for wintering waters on the Pacific Coast, the lower Colorado River, or along the Gulf of Mexico.

These unmistakable birds are most commonly sighted on the eastern Plains, but have also been spotted in the mountains, including on Antero Reservoir in South Park, and various reservoirs in the San Luis Valley. Common loons have even summered at various bodies of water throughout the state, though none are known to breed here. (Their closest known nesting areas are Yellowstone and Jackson lakes in northwestern Wyoming.)

Common loons are large, heavy-bodied waterfowl also called “divers” for their primary mode of catching food: they dive beneath the water’s surface and swim swiftly, propelled by strong feet set far back under their body, in pursuit of fish.

These powerful divers catch and eat fish as large as 10 inches long, including minnows, suckers, perch, gizzard shad, rock cod, killifish, and others. They also dine on crustaceans, mollusks, aquatic insects, leeches, and frogs.

In summer, pairs claim their nesting territory with that throaty, stuttering song—if you’ve ever heard a loon’s “laughter,” you know the origin of the name “loon,” as in “loonie” or crazy person. While courting, the two birds often rear up on their feet in the water with wings partly spread, then “run” side by side across the surface like swans.

When it comes time to move south for the winter, common loons migrate singly, in pairs, or in small groups. Unlike some birds, they don’t fly from nesting grounds to wintering areas in one long push; instead, they move from lake to lake, stopping to rest and feed before heading on.

Imagine yourself on the deck of a cabin by a sizable mountain lake with a hot cup of coffee in your hands, listening to the pre-dawn sounds. Then imagine that the stillness is split by eerie laughter, a wild yodel rising from the throat of some creature from a distant time. Imagine that call echoing once, twice, three times, before dying away. The mist rising from the lake swirls around you. The loon calls again.

Now that’s magic. 

   © 2002 Susan J. Tweit

Susan Tweit is an AVAS member living in Salida where she writes professionally for nature publications including Audubon magazine. Reporting on her most recent activities she  writes: “I’ve been in Wyoming, teaching at Teton Science School and other places, and watching wolves in Yellowstone in the snow. “