One of the passages in literature that has long delighted
me is an account by Thoreau (in Walden, a book too much neglected) of the loon. Why have our writers said so little of this large and curious tribe of bird ? Within a day or two of residence in this neighbourhood we watched a number of red-throated divers at fairly close quarters, and rather more remotely several great northern divers, swimming as fast, it seemed, as a motor boat. Within the minute and half or so that they would spend from time to time under water they covered altogether astonishing distances. It was a game in itself to mark their emergence. It is a stimulating change for an inland dweller to be in a place where big birds are more common than small : divers, goosanders, shags, and cormorants, and last and greatest
the golden eagle.
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