At the end of summer in the motion picture, “On Golden Pond,” an elderly couple while closing down their vacation cottage, pause for final look at the water. The man, Norman Thayer (played by Henry Fonda) has just recovered from a health scare when he delightedly remarks to his wife Ethel (played by Katherine Hepburn) “The loons! They’ve come around to say goodbye.”
I imagine this scene is replicated throughout the North Country this time of year. No doubt, folks continue to be both thrilled and saddened by hearing their loons. I know I am at the end of the Interlochen Arts Camp season.
I traditionally take my students to the shore of Duck Lake on the last day of classes.
Two summers ago, a family of loons, which we had been watching for several weeks, swam right up to the dock by the nature museum . One of the campers asked, “Will our 'loonlings' come back to Interlochen next year?”
Young loons are actually called “chicks,” and I had to tell the camper that no--- the chicks would not return the next year. Little did I know then that none of us would be back in 2020.
Loon migration is really quite strange. The parent birds molt, and in their drab winter plumage, will leave soon. According to banding records, loons from the Upper Midwest migrate through the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean or down the Mississippi Flyway to the Gulf of Mexico.
The young do not yet have strong enough flight feathers reach to the ocean. They won’t leave until the lakes start to freeze. And then, if they reach salt water, they stay in the ocean for three, maybe four years.
But eventually, if they survive, our loon chicks will return to their lake of their birth. And fill the Interlochen nights with their eerie, yet magical calls.
