The loon, or great northern diver, is reported to have displayed
her mother love and anxiety to a sportsman fishing in Sebago
Lake in Maine: He surprized the mother with one young one
near his canoe. She was employing every artifice to call the
little one away, but the infant swam so near the boat that the
fisherman took him aboard in his landing-net, and, holding him
on his knee, gently stroked his downy coat, to the evident
satisfaction of the youngster. Meanwhile the mother was in an
agony of distress. At first, forgetting her native wildness and
timidity in her mother love, she boldly approached the canoe,
and, rising in the water till she appeared to stand upon it,
furiously flapped her wings, uttering menacing cries. Finding
this of no avail, she pretended that she was wounded, rolling
over in the water and finally lying still as if dead, evidently
to attract attention to herself and away from the young one. The
fisherman, touched by these displays of motherly affection, put
the young loon into the water, upon which the mother instantly
came to life and again tried to entice her little one to go
with her. (Text.)--OLIVE THORNE MILLER, “The Bird Our
Brother.”
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