I’ve been going through a raft of documents on a CD that David Hodsdon gave me recently and I came across this piece written by Ed Grant and decided it needed to be posted. I don’t know if it was ever published anywhere, but it certainly deserved to be. Perhaps he wrote it for use in a newsletter. In any event, his recent passing makes this piece seem all the more poignant. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

THE LOONS OF NEW ENGLAND
by Ed Grant

The Common Loon (Gavia Immer)

There is no other sound quite like it, the tremulous wail that floats across a northern lake at dawn, the haunting voice of the northern wilds.

Few people can hear the call of the common loon without being moved, it is truly the sound of the north woods, the wail of the wilderness, and for many visitors to New England, hearing one laugh in the night is a high point of a trip.

The common loon, with its necklace of white and checkerboard pattern on the back, is the species that comes to most people’s mind when they think of loons. There are four other species, the yellow-billed, the arctic, the Pacific and the red-throated, but only the common loon is found south of Canada in the summer, with the southern edge of its breeding range stretching from the Adirondacks through northern Vermont and New Hampshire to Maine. It is strictly a warm-weather resident in the region’s inland, migrating in late fall to the sea from the Maritimes to Florida. Continue reading →