moon sheds a broad trail
of light along the still waters of the lake, the graceful swimmer will
glide across and disappear in the darkness, breaking the bright
reflection into a multitude of chasing, quivering, trailing threads of
silver. Throughout the day, where the cedars come down to meet their
shadows in the dark water, he swims ceaselessly about, sitting low, with
black, glossy neck gracefully curved and displaying its delicate white
markings. Sometimes he stretches himself wearily, flapping his wings,
and displaying his white breast and the handsome, showy markings of his
sides. Though wary and aloof, and without a trace of animation in his
loud, penetrating cries, he shows his kinship by the scrupulous care
with which he preens his handsome feathers--even lying on his back in
the water to comb out and smooth his glossy, white breast.

A hurried cry from overhead may unexpectedly reveal the presence of a
pair of loons in another element, and it is always fascinating to watch
their steady, strained, energetic flight above the tops of the pines,
generally to curve down to some more attractive expanse in the
cedar-girt lake. For the water is the loon's natural element. There is
an amusing deliberateness in his graceful, silent dive. He does not make
the hurried dip of his smaller cousin, the grebe, but more calmly curves
both neck and body, disappearing under the surface in a graceful arch.
Settling down and swimming with only head and neck exposed is an
evidence of suspicion, and is generally followed by a long dive, with a
belated reappearance in some remote part of the lake.

When the mother loon takes her two offspring out for a swim, it is a big
event in the domestic circle. The outing is announced by prolonged and
unusual repetitions of the laughing call. For half an hour the echoes of
the lake are kept alive with sounds portentous of new departures in the
loon world. Then a peculiar object is seen to emerge from the marshy bay
and cross under the shadowy cedars toward the open water. A field-glass
shows it to be the mother loon and her two offspring, the three huddled
so closely together that they are almost indistinguishable. The mother
is unceasing in her care and attention. She strokes the backs of the
young birds with her bill, playing and fussing around and close to them,
as if they could not exist without her constant attention. Now and then
she leans over and lifts a broad, black, webbed foot out of t