Nothing common about loons

If you could choose, would you rather be known as a “great diver” or a “common loon?” One name sounds pretty great, while the other sounds, well, loony. That’s the dilemma the most common loon of North Idaho, the common loon, faces. If our loons were to join their fellow species-members in northern Europe, they would be called the “great northern diver” rather than the “common loon.”

Truly, this magnificent bird deserves the former title but has itself given the negative connotation to the latter title. All the loons, and there are only five species in the world, all of which are found in various parts of North America, are called divers elsewhere, just as all the European and Asian divers are called loons in North America. It has been no small issue between ornithologists on the various continents.

Loon would not be so bad if the word had not been anthropomorphized to refer to odd or abnormal humans (loony) or cartoons (Looney). My dictionary defines a loon as a slang meant to insult someone’s mental condition or intelligence. When it was first given to the divers, the name was “lam” and meant lame or floppy in the Scandinavian languages. The word denoted the birds’ helplessness out of water and had nothing to do with their mental state.

However, when a loon, the bird, is heard in the wild, on some remote Arctic or boreal lake, in the middle of the night, giving its nesting-ground territorial call that carries for miles, you understand where the connotation came from. Various field guides variously describe the call as mournful, eerie, wailing, slightly manic and even as “demented laughter.” Those are not pleasant sounds when heard all alone in some remote place that would make a perfect setting for a nature-oriented horror movie.

Naturalists with a more stable psyche, on the other hand, refer to the call as a yodel, a yelping tremolo (I had to look that one up – it sounded kind of scary), and even the “quintessential ‘call of the wild.’ ” It is, in fact, the “song of the loon,” and not a loony song at all. But thus arose the name and the insult, and in North America we are left to differentiate between the two.

Despite the name, and especially so when combined with “common,” our common loon carries a great deal of prestige with it wherever it goes, for it is the national bird of Canada, the provincial bird of Ontario, and the state bird of Minnesota. It also carries with it an aura of adventure and wildness, for it is a species of remote wooded lakes and tundral ponds in summer and the open sea in winter. And it is only between these two seasons, in the spring and in the fall, that we get to see the common loon in our part of North Idaho. With this loon, however, it’s almost as if we were getting two different birds in one year.

Beginning in March, loons lose their plain and indistinct winter plumage and become one of the more stunning large birds passing through. They are goose-sized, up to a 9-pound goose, they have a dagger-like beak, although they do not stab their prey with it, they are thick-necked and thick-billed, they are black-headed and black-billed, they have red eyes, they have a white chin strap and a white, vertically striped collar, they have a black back with a white checker-pattern, and their head and neck has an oily sheen in the sun – stunning, and sleek.

The common loons we see in the fall, at least most of them, for they molt again from September through October, are plain and indistinct and can be difficult to identify at a distance from other fall divers. The common loon’s cousin-species, the yellow-billed loon, is larger goose-sized, has a yellow-bill that can resemble the gray bill of a winterized common loon, and carries its bill raised in a way that would suggest a bit of snootiness. It is rare in our area, but is seen most frequently from Sunnyside Road along Lake Pend Oreille. There has been one there this spring.

There are two other diver cousin-species, the Pacific loon and the Arctic loon. The former has become a regular fall transient in our area, and the latter has never been seen in North Idaho. Both of these loons are smaller and of a different body-type and have a really cool summer head and neck pattern.

The fifth diver is the red-throated loon, which has a red neck spot in the summer. It is also the smallest of the family, being more duck-size than goose-size, and has not been seen in Kootenai County for many years. One has recently been watched, however, from Sunnyside Road. In fact, for a short time in early April, birders could see all but the Arctic loon at the same time from one turnout along Sunnyside Road.

The reason Europeans call these birds divers is because everything about a loon is designed just for that purpose. They are, in fact, little submarines. When floating on the surface, most of a loon’s body is below the water line. If not fishing or alarmed, but just wanting to get away from it all, they expel air from their respiratory system and gradually sink, without a ripple, below the surface. When hunting, they stick their head under water and float as headless bodies while watching for a passing fish.

Loons are so specialized at diving that they have totally sacrificed their ability to walk and have put serious limitations on their ability to fly, at least the take-off part of flight. Their legs are short and placed so far back on their bodies that it is impossible for them to stand. On land, they push themselves around on their chests or use their wings crutchlike. Their feet are adapted as large paddles that give them great underwater propulsion and steering and their leg bones are flattened side-to-side to reduce drag.

Loon bones are denser than most other birds, which helps decrease buoyancy, but also makes flight more difficult. Once in the air, loons can fly at 60 mph and at high altitudes, but getting into the air is a challenge. They require a large water surface, at least 60 feet worth, to run across while madly flapping their wings. If forced down over land, they will die. So, when alarmed while on a lake, they will dive rather than fly from danger.

Underwater is where divers excel. Loons have been recorded 250 feet below the surface and have been clocked at three minutes without a breath, although most dives are shallow and around 40 seconds in duration. Only penguins do it better, but no matter how far they run, they never do get into flight.

Our common loons are fairly common in the spring and fall in North Idaho, but there is nothing loony about their behavior while here. They are great divers wherever they are found, in addition to being great northern divers in other parts of the world. They are a magnificent, and at this time of year, a stunning bird. So, despite having Scandinavian roots myself, I will be thinking of them more as great divers and less as lame loons in my future birding.