Editor’s Note: Dave Eastman lived in Tamworth and was a friend of the lake and a prolific nature writer. His work appeared here, on WMWV and in the Conway Daily Sun. Before he died in 2019, he sent us a batch of essays that he thought the lake community would enjoy. We have been running them ever since. This short piece ran on WMWV on November 26, 2018.

At this time of the year we might see a red-throated loon or two as they overwinter through our region. This bird breeds in the Arctic and can be seen in coastal NH during fall and spring, as well as sometimes overwintering here.

Their peak fall migration is in October and early November and is generally over by mid-December.

Inland fall migrants are rare and usually seen on the Connecticut River and on major lakes. In March, they move northward along the coast.

One was discovered on iced-in Lake Sunapee, swimming with some other loons near the center of the lake in 2017.

As Harry Vogel [of Loon Preservation Committee] reported, “They were at least a half mile off shore and several eagles were keeping a hungry eye on them.”

A rescue attempt was made the next day in that December, but there was too much open water for him and several firemen to be successful.

The loons had been reported to the Executive Director of Loon Preservation Committee by volunteer Kittie Wilson, but by Christmas they had made it out of there after being observed over the next few days following this December 20 incident. Strong winds and more open water probably assisted this survival.

This was only the second record of a red-throated loon occurring on Sunapee Lake since 2009.

The red-throated loon is smaller than the common loon we are so familiar with. It is about 24 to 27 inches overall. In its breeding season it has a very distinctive red throat patch that makes it unmistakable. Its rather slender bill is slightly upturned as another important field mark.

Because of its ability to rise readily from the surface of a small body of water, the red-throated loon often nests on the shores of tiny pools in its far northern barren grounds of the Arctic.

It can spring into the air, even without the aid of a breeze, unlike our common loon which needs to run over a lake’s water surface to launch itself.

The nest with its two large eggs, which are dark and heavily marked, is so located that the sitting parent bird when startled can quickly reach deep enough water to submerge and disappear promptly from view.