A northern visitor helps make me a fine day

A common loon in breeding plumage.

A couple of weeks ago I was sauntering along a twisting path of beach sand,  through waist-high salt marsh cordgrass, on Gaspee Point, in Warwick, R.I.,  and passed a now vacant skeleton of an osprey platform on top of a telephone pole. Ospreys had not yet arrived here on upper Narragansett Bay, although there have been two recent osprey sightings 25 miles south, at Newport and Jamestown.

In the distance, I could see Providence’s skyline and wind turbines. Then I heard a  “brrup. brrup’’ from a flock of Brandt geese swimming in sunlit shallows.  Their voices would end in a higher octave and become a chorus of gabble and grunting. I wondered what they could be communicating to each other.

There were high clouds to the southwest in the otherwise cloudless blue sky. A small propeller-driven plane sounded in the distance. The wind and gently curling waves together made a whooshing noise.

A single Brandt floated near the shore, preening, while two other Brandt pushed their dark beaks into the sand and gravel bottom. They ingested tiny rounded beach stones to help digest their favorite meal, eelgrass, which they rolled into bite-size-balls before swallowing.

I saw a flash of white about 200 yards out from the beach, and quickly  reached for my monocular, hoping to get a clearer view. I caught  sight of him before he disappeared below the surface. I thought:  “It is a solitary common loon…wow…wintering here on the bay…so lucky to see it.” I wondered where his summer home in the North Woods might be. I assumed that it was a male, but I couldn’t be certain.

In the winter, the male loons lose their elegant, “tuxedo-like” plumage, becoming a monotonous black/white. Their breeding plumage, from March to  October,  is a checkerboard, including a dazzling, vertical-bars, black/white “scarf.” Loons’ summer homes are pristine and remote ponds and lakes in New England’s North Woods and in Canada.*

In the winter, loons are lone visitors spread out on Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island Sound and Long Island Sound.

In the summer they make unforgettable, ethereal calls that echo off mountains, and across lakes and ponds, in the North Country. But in winter, they are silent. They are amazing swimmers with large, black web feet that let them to dive very deep, and swim long distances underwater chasing fish, their prey. Loons can be traced back to archaeopteryx in Mesozoic times. They are large birds,  nearly three feet long, but clumsy flyers.

I rested my creaky, tired legs on a silver-gray, driftwood seat (about  10 feet long) with cement blocks substituting as legs. It was fairly comfortable as I scribbled in my notebook.

Then I shouted out to a friend who almost daily strolls along the shore using his bright red walking poles. He’s about 50 yards away from me, so I’m shouting, “Hey, Harry, it’s me…John…!”  Harry’s retired now, and on most days walks in a five-mile loop from his house along Gaspee Point. I had last talked with him when he was raking the last autumn leaves in his yard.

Always nice to chat a bit with Harry. That, and seeing a wintering loon on our precious bay, made for a fine day.

***

*Ancient people called, among other things,  Maritime Archaic People, Circumpolar People, and Lost Red Paint People, saw loons as connected to the spirit world, including the afterlife. Their territory included Demark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland and Maine. They lived off the sea as fishermen and hunters of seals, and were skilled boat builders, navigators and tool makers. Loons fascinated such famed writers of the past  as Henry David Thoreau, E.B. White, Edwin Way Teale, his wife, Nellie Teal,  and the still very much alive John McPhee.

John Long is a Warwick-based writer.