Chesapeake Almanac Podcast
Episode 2: March: Loons in Breeding Plumage

Copyright © John Page Williams Jr. All rights reserved.

This is John Page Williams with another reading from my Chesapeake Almanac.

This entry is for the month of March and it’s entitled “Loons in Breeding Plumage.”

By March it is easy to have cabin fever and a real urge to get outdoors. As long as you’re prudent about safety, this is a good time to be on the water. The Bay country is still chilly, drab, and brown, but there is a lot to see.

Some things are obvious, like swans staging in large flocks of migration, or ospreys just returning from the south. But there are some quieter sights. The osprey-watcher may well swing the binoculars out to open water and find a large bird with a heavy bill sitting quietly and half-submerged. Suddenly the bird dives, but so unobtrusively that the observer wonders if it had ever been there at all. Then it is there again, as if it had never gone. It is a common loon (Gavia immer) in its dramatic breeding plumage: dark iridescent head and neck, collar of alternating black and white vertical stripes, white breast and black and white-checked back. Like the swans it will be heading north this spring.

Loons seem to live two lives. In summer, they live by couples on small lakes and tundra ponds all across Canada and the northern United States from Minnesota to upstate New York and northern New England. They breed also in Labrador, Greenland, and Iceland. In general, they live quietly and away from humans, but the few people close to them are always thrilled, amazed, or horrified by their eerie ghostly cries.

The birds raise their chicks by the water’s edge, carrying them on their backs until they learn to swim and dive. As cold weather comes in the fall, they join loons from other lakes and migrate to the coasts where the water stays open all winter. In winter on the Pacific, they range from British Columbia all the way to Mexico. On the Atlantic, they can be found from Nova Scotia to Florida. Large numbers of them spend the fall on the Chesapeake feeding on menhaden before flying over to the Atlantic to feed in the relatively warm, shallow waters over the continental shelf during their wintertime molting period, when they cannot fly.

They return to the Chesapeake in late February and March, resplendent in new breeding plumage. As the Bay wakes up, they feed on its spring bounty–herring in March and April, menhaden in May–to regain their strength for migration and breeding.

Loons are remarkable divers. Their bodies are streamlined and compact. Feathers are short and dense, efficient enough to insulate them all winter in near-freezing water, but not oily enough to create buoyancy and hinder them underwater. Their broad feet are placed far back on their bodies,  just under their short tails. The feet generate tremendous power; loons have been caught in nets at depths over 150 feet. They are nearly as efficient as rockfish and bluefish at chasing small fish.

For underwater efficiency, the loon’s wings are relatively small, so it takes effort and a sprint across the water to get aloft. Returning to the water, the bird cannot break easily either, so it comes in low, hard, and fast. When approached on the
water by man, it is more likely to dive than fly.

Once aloft, however, the bird is a strong flier. It is distinctive: about the size of a goose, with similar wing beat but a shorter neck and big feet trailing behind. There will be loons around the Bay from now until early May. Watermen, sailors, and anglers will see them, if they watch carefully.

For more happenings around the Bay in March see our other Chesapeake Almanac podcasts.

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