Pacific Loon

Description: Breeding Pacific Loons are dapper birds with soft gray heads and intricate black-and-white patterning on the back and neck. They nest on tundra lakes, where their far-carrying wails lend a haunting sound to the Arctic landscape. This is the most abundant of North America’s five loon species, and in winter they gather in large numbers in coastal waters, bays, and estuaries. Spring migration can produce one of the continent’s great wildlife spectacles, in which thousands of Pacific Loons, along with Red-throated and Common Loons, pass by for hours.