| Red-throated Loon | |
|---|---|
 Adult in breeding plumage and young | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Gaviiformes |
| Family: | Gaviidae |
| Genus: | Gavia |
| Species: | Gavia stellata |
The Red-throated Loon (Gavia stellata) is commonly sighted along the Pacific coast and on tundra breeding grounds; rare elsewhere in western North America. Winters on open lakes, bays, and especially ocean.
Appearance[]
The Red-throated Loon has a slender bill which is upturned and usually raised above horizontal. It's call is a quacking or gull-like wailing.
Length: 63cm/25"
Wing Span: 90cm/36"
Weight: 1.4kg/3.1lb
Behavior[]
Adult and young Red-throated Loons move toward coastlines in preparation for migration, which occurs at least partly at night. Daytime movements of many thousands are often seen along marine coasts. When foraging over the ocean, this species is highly mobile and may dive for prey, much like the Northern Gannet, which occupies a similar niche in winter, though gannets can consume larger prey and forage farther from shore.
Feeding[]
Red-throated Loons eat several types of fish, leeches, copepods, crustaceans, mollusks, squid, polychaete worms, and aquatic insects. It hunts for prey by diving underwater and grasping the prey by its bill. They often locate prey first by dipping their head underwater and looking around as they rest on the water’s surface.
Breeding and Nesting[]
Red-throated Loons are monogamous, but not much is known about the longevity of their bonds or where and how pairs form. Pairs use displays to defend territories (chiefly the nesting pond and nest vicinity) against intruders, including humans. Adults may raise or lower the neck, splash-dive, slap the water with their feet (recalling a beaver tail-slap), to warn intruders, or may rush across the water with wings partly open and head extended, in threat. Pairs are often observed raising the body out of the water, extend the neck, raise the wings, and tip the bill downward. This display is known as the "plesiosaur posture". Another similar display known as the "penguin posture" involves raising the body vertically, stretching out the neck, and pointing the head and bill downward. Males and females perform these displays typically at other Red-throated Loons who intrude on their territory. Both parents tend and feed the young. After the young birds are several weeks old, they sometimes move to a different pond or lake.
Male Red-throated Loons select the nest site, usually in wetlands at the edge of a shallow, small pond or on a small island in the pond. In the high arctic, they nest on larger ponds. Nests are always built on vegetation, never on rocks. Both the male and female build the nest, either on the shoreline or in shallow water near it. Nests are mounds of moss, decayed vegetation, grasses, sedges, and mud, sometimes lined with dry grass, gathered from the immediate vicinity of the nest and formed with the feet and body. In some cases, no nest material is used, making it just a depression in the vegetation. Nests average about 18 inches across and about 3 inches above waterline; the interior depression averages 9.5 inches across and 1.6 inches deep. 1 to 2 eggs are laid and 1 brood is raised per year.
Distribution and Habitat[]
The Red-throated Loon is present in Eurasia and North America, breeding in the northern parts of both continents. It winters along the coasts of east Asia, west Europe, parts of Mediterranean and Caspian Sea Pacific and Atlantic coasts of Canada and USA.
Red-throated Loons breed in rugged tundra and taiga wetlands in both lowlands and highlands, up to about 3,500 feet elevation. Their ability to spring into flight without first pattering on the water (as other loons have to do) permits them to use small ponds for nesting. They do use larger lakes in places where larger loons are absent. In migration, they fly along ocean shorelines and also along the shores of large lakes (such as the Great Lakes), but their precise migration routes are not known. Foul weather sometimes grounds migrants in places where they would not otherwise land, such as rivers and small lakes in interior North America. Wintering birds are found only in shallower marine waters near land, and in major estuaries and sounds. They are very rarely seen far out to sea.
Similar Birds[]
Gallery[]
