My Life List #2 - Common Loon

By Mel Carriere

I have decided that when I lack for inspiration for this blog, as I am now, I will simply go back through my life list and pull a bird from it to write about.  This should give me 200 plus topics to pull from in emergencies, so it should serve as a reliable fallback source whenever Mother Nature is hiding her winged marvels from me for whatever cruel, capricious reason.

I don't know how you do your listing, and I'm not at all sure I'm doing mine correctly, but my life list is actually a copy of the American Ornithologists Union (AOU) checklist, which I converted into an Excel spreadsheet that I keep stored on my computer.

I decided to start blogging my list in taxonomic order, but I may change this and jump around randomly from time to time, particularly because when I get to a group like the dabbling ducks or the shorebirds or the gulls that have quite a few entries on the list you may get weary reading about the same locations or circumstances that I first observed these species in, because most of them probably came from the same small group of places.

If you are an observant person, and I expect you are because you engage in a hobby where careful observation is what it is all about, you have probably already asked yourself why this first blog in a series that I just said was going to begin in taxonomic order actually started with the #2 bird on the list.  My answer is that I already wrote about my initial encounter with bird #1, the Pacific Loon, just a couple of weeks ago.  I'll put a link to this article at the end of this one, in case you are interested.

Anyhow, my initial encounter with Gavia immer, and boy was it ever a brief one, came on a combined whale watching slash pelagic birding expedition sponsored by the Audubon society that I went on very close to my birthday in February 2007.  My mother was in San Diego to help celebrate my big 43, so I thought this would be a fun family outing for everyone.  It really was satisfying for everybody except my oldest son, who had no sea legs and spent almost the entire tour below decks, lying on a bench in the cafeteria.  Truth was I should have taken some Dramamine myself as my mother suggested, but being an old salt of 6 years in the Navy I thought I could take anything the Pacific Ocean could throw at me.  As it turns out, however, the small boats toss about a lot more than the big warships do, and I did feel a bit queasy for a while.  The moral of this story is that you should always listen to Mom.

Everyone else in the family was fine because they took their Dramamine, including my youngest son, who was running about topside like a little monkey and would have been swinging from the rigging if they would have let him.  Other than that I won't go into too many details about this expedition because it contributed at least six or seven birds to the life list and I want to save some for later.

The encounter with The Common Loon was so quick that I would have missed it if I had been on my own, but as it turns out there were several highly qualified birders on the boat who pointed out the Loon just past the big 'L' curve in San Diego bay as we were passing the submarine base and making our way out to the end of Point Loma to cross the breakwater.

Luckily I was able to fix my binoculars on the Loon before it dove, and all I saw of it really was a very drab diver in winter plumage.  I did not have the pleasure of laying eyes upon the bejeweled back that was the inspiration of many a Native American legend, and I never heard the haunting call that lends a mysterious quality to Midwestern glacial lakes.

But with so many certified birders on the boat this Loon was a keeper, so I folded it up and tucked it away in my list before the choppy waves on the bay caused me to lose sight of it completely.  Particularly tricky were those long, protruding legs and feet, but I finally got the Loon to reel them in, stop squawking, and go into the list quietly.  And then we were on to the open water, where many a pelagic wonder awaited...


Read about bird #1, the Pacific Loon here


This stupendous shot of a Common Loon in breeding plumage is from:  "Gavia immer -Minocqua, Wisconsin, USA -swimming-8" by John Picken from Chicago, USA - LoonUploaded by snowmanradio. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gavia_immer_-Minocqua,_Wisconsin,_USA_-swimming-8.jpg#/media/File:Gavia_immer_-Minocqua,_Wisconsin,_USA_-swimming-8.jpg


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