In our childhood, my sisters and I spent summer months at camp in Wisconsin. My sister Susan’s camp had a weekly rule that the ticket to the highly anticipated Sunday dinner was a stamped and addressed envelope containing a letter home. Susan’s solution to this onerous requirement was to send the same message every week resulting in a collection of letters at home reporting “I saw a loon on the lake” and nothing else. By mid July in central New Hampshire, a bird blog post about loons seems almost obligatory. But considering the popularity verging on religious zeal of loons across the northern United States and the number of people already steeped in loon lore, I am tempted to simply say: “I saw a loon on the lake” and leave it at that.

Well, I suppose I could wax romantically about their haunting calls and throw in links to recordings, but others more gifted than I (Henry David Thoreau, Mary Oliver, Sigurd Olson, Katharine Hepburn as Ethyl Thayer, etc.) have described these birds and their magical sounds. I could comment about their torpedo-like diving and amazing swimming prowess contrasted with their completely awkward mobility on land (legs are too far aft). Wow, they can fly at speeds of 75 miles an hour, but require an almost comical running start on water to take off. (Wait, running on water? How does that work?). And loons are ferocious defenders of their nests and their young. I read a description of finding a dead eagle floating near a dead loon chick - the eagle’s heart having been pierced by an adult loon’s dagger sharp beak. I was struck by the discovery that while most birds have hollow bones to facilitate flight, loons have solid, heavier bones to facilitate diving. And what about that startling red eye? There have been lots of theories about better underwater vision or shading the bright sun on dappled lake surfaces like psychedelic sunglasses. In fact, like the bright colored attributes of other birds, the red iris of loons appears to be a visual display to attract the attention of other loons (and we humans as well). Finally, after reading and writing about the insanely long migrations of other bird species, I was surprised to learn that New Hampshire’s loons simply fly off shore to winter in the North Atlantic spending the entire time on the water. Not my idea of an escape from harsh winter weather!

In Ojibwa legend, the loon was the first act of creation and it’s voice that of the Creator themself. For the Cree, the cry of the loon is the voice of fallen warriors calling back to the land of the living. And Eskimo folklore with over 30 names for the various loon species has more references to loons than perhaps any indigenous people. Far north of the Great Lakes on cliffs of the Canadian Shield, there are crude pictographs of loons that may be over 8000 years old.

My first memories of loon music were not from those Wisconsin summer camp nights. I was far too deep in the misery of homesickness. But a few years later my father and I began making trips to the Boundary Waters on the Minnesota-Canadian border. In the bays and inlets of Agnes and Kawnipi Lakes, “I heard a loon on the lake” for the first time. And the songs of the loons were sealed in my memory - joining the communal déjà vu of all who have heard them before and since.