On Sun, 25 Feb 1996, jerry pruett wrote:

> Chris comments about avoiding white cloth brought to mind an experience I
> had once with a group of birders on the shore of Lake Superior. A bird was
> spotted swimming far from shore, I believe it was suspected to be a
> Red-throated Loon, which is a good bird in Minnesota. Anyway, someone took a
> white shirt and snapped it as you would to shake a rug, several times in the
> direction of the bird. This was in the pre Kowa era. The intent was that
> somehow this would attract the bird closer to us for better X20 scope looks
> to nail down an I.D. If I remember this did seem to work, although that was
> a very subjective judgement, as the bird may have been swimming closer of
> its own volition. Does anyone know if this is a valid technique, especially
> costal tweeters birding from shore?

I'm not sure about Red-throated Loons, but I did have an experience with
a friendly Common Loon once. He was about thirty feet off shore in Morro
Bay, in shallow water. We were checking him out with our binocs, but he
kept his distance. When we stopped watchinghim so avidly (perhaps the
giant eye thing?) in order to check out some surf scoters, he came
closer. I had zeroed in on a Franklin's Gull when my friend Troy said,
"Uhhh..hey Pat, the bird, uh...."

When I looked over, the loon had moved within six feet of us, bobbing in
the water (Morro Bay has relatively no surf action when calm) with his
beautiful head turned sideways to keep an eye on us.

We watched him for a while, then he dove under the water. The cool part
is, he swam TOWARDS the shore! We got to see him do an olympic swimmer's
turn about three feet from our feet; the water was crystal clear on the
edges.

We were wearing white shirts. A coincidence? Hmmmmmmm.... :-)
(Of course, we were also so stunned that we weren't moving a muscle! You
guys that live near tons of loons are SPOILED!)

-Pat
scott931 at uidaho.edu