There is a song that ends : “Lord, this world will make you crazy. Crazy as a loon”.
If you listen to it, please do not take those words at face value. The Loon is the wisest and most trustworthy water bird I know. At Breeches Lake there is only one water bird that never fails to show up every summer: The quiet, majestic, romantic loon.
Loons utter schrieks and chattering hoots that sound like mockery or demoniac laughter echoing over a lonely lake or a melancholic marsh.
You may listen to their singing here:
Here is an anecdote: some family relatives from Spain (mother, sisters, nephew and niece) were visiting Breeches Lake and they were left overnight at our small wooden cottage. As there was not enough sleeping space, I went with my wife to spend the night at my mother in law’s cottage just 500 m. distance. By 10:00 PM I decided to walk to the cabin and see how the newly arrived family was fairing. We did not have phone in those years, so it was impossible to communicate other than by personal contact. When I entered the cabin, it was close to pandemonium. The two children were crying their hearts out and my sisters were in despair. “This house is haunted!!” they shouted. “and we want to leave as soon as possible. There is a ghost at the lake who is laughing and shrieking in the most melancholic voice. On top of that an animal is trying to get in the house by chewing on the floor.”
It turned out that the loon was singing his heart out and the porcupine was enjoying eating the resin-rich plywood used to build the floor of the cottage. After I explained the circumstances of nature in the woods and got my nephew to help me in scaring away the porcupines everything went back to normal.
Loons are large birds (up to 90 cm) and they definitely prefer the water to move around. They feed on fish, shrimp, frogs and even an occasional vegetable salad of marsh plants. They can dive up to 30 m. and stay under water for several minutes.
The Loon is the mascot of Breeches Lake and with a good reason: He is the one animal that is always present at our lake during the summer. In the winter the loon usually migrates to the USA, but their breeding grounds are always in Canada.
