The common loon in winter is drab. And that’s okay with the loon. Coastal bald eagles now hang around all year and prey on what they can find and catch. The loon that you see here was transitioning yesterday to its winter attire:
In the summer, when they’re trying to mate, loons are fashion plates wearing birdland’s version of Giorgio Amani formalwear: white-spangled, rich black plumage, ruby eyes, shiny black bill, and a flickering iridescent necklace:
Leighton Archive Photo
In their winter wear, when they’re trying to survive, they ditch the startling red eyes, black and white attire, and iridescent jewelry and don grays and whites that have the brilliance of dishwater.
On a gray winter’s day, you’d hardly notice a loon fishing alone as they do, very low in the water, disappearing and appearing without hardly a sound – except when it can’t help being loony and emits a startling winter wail, then laughs tremulously at itself. (Primary image taken in Little Deer Isle, Maine, on October 7, 2025.)