My husband noticed some new visitors to our cove of the lake. “They are not ducks,” he said, “but they aren’t geese either.”
I looked out and saw their distinctive head and neck shape and said, “They may be loons.”
All birds are best seen from a distance in my opinion. I do believe they are beautiful (well, most of them), and some have such lovely songs. But up close they have dangerous bills and beady eyes, so I like viewing them from afar.
My aunt and uncle had bird feeders and could tell you each and every species that visited them. I know a robin, bluebird, cardinal, and such, but the little brown ones all look alike to me. Sparrows, all of them? My husband calls them all finches. And my grandfather used to call all black birds starlings. Not a lot of bird lore in our family tree (except for my aunt and uncle, of course).
So how did I know what these visiting birds were? (It turns out they are loons, according to all we read about them.) I’m really not sure. Something just told me that’s what they were.
They have returned for three days. We haven’t seen them before, but we haven’t spent this much time at the lake in previous years either. Maybe this is a stopover on their migratory path? (I need to look that up, too.)
It’s been fun to watch them dive (I didn’t know they did that either) and hopefully they have found plenty to eat. Their black and white tuxedo coloring is pretty, too.
But we haven’t heard them make their crazy-as-a-loon calls, though. Possibly they sense the peace of this place, just as we do.
And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” Genesis 1:20
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