LOON TAMENESS, OCCURRENCE, AND NGS GUIDE

Norm Saunders (osprey@ARI.Net)
Sun, 7 Jun 1998 17:09:32 -0500 

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To: mdosprey@ARI.Net 
From: rick@blazie.com (rick) 
Subject: LOON TAMENESS, OCCURRENCE, AND NGS GUIDE

        On the subject of Pacific Loon occurring in eastern North America,
there is not much to add to what Dave Czaplak has said, other than it is a
regular vagrant and I know of none kept in captivity. I would like to
address a couple of points, however.
        First, my obsessive hatred of the word tame as applied to wild
birds that permit close appraoch under some circumstances. Tame means, and
only means, reduced from a state of wildness for the benefit of humans.
Some dictionaries now accept a wider usage, but we strict constructionists
still bridle at this one. I like David Quammen's alternative,
"ecologically naive', although the modifier is not strictly necessary. And
don't go running to some permissivist dictionary and send me definitions.
I am dangerously irrational on this one.
        It is, by the way, not rare for loons to occasionally permit quite
close approach and a summering Pacific in New Jersey a few years ago was
as naive as this one. I have seen comments about this behavior in the
literature but none pretend to know why it is true or what factors are
involved.
        Now to the question of Arctic Loon in the East and the comments in
the National Geographic field guide. After it was published, Claudia Wilds
and I spent considerable time trying to track down all known reports and
specimens. Our conclusion was that the European Arctic had not been
recorded west of the Faeroe Islands at that time that the Geo guide was
wrong. Subsequently there was the controversial bird in Masachusetts and
one from Florida that has been largely overlooked but may well have been
an Arctic on the basis of a very large flank patch. The write-up appeared
in Florida Field Naturalist at least ten years ago and was fairly
persuasive. Other than that, I do not know of any Arctic reports from the
East and know of no specimens or unequivocal photographs.
        As a sidebar, that comment in the NGS guide will be fixed because
we just started as major revision, due out some time next year.

Rick

"Lack of education is an extraordinary handicap when one is being
offensive."  Josephine Tey

Rick Blom
rblom@blazie.com
Bel Air, Maryland