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Loons use a variety of materials to build their nests including aquatic vegetation, pine needles, leaves, grass, moss and mud. Sometimes, nest material is almost lacking. Both male and female build the nest and incubate jointly for 28 days. If the eggs are lost, the pair may re-nest, usually in a different location.
The common loon or great northern diver (Gavia immer) is a large member of the loon, or diver, family of birds. Breeding adults have a plumage that includes a broad black head and neck with a greenish, purplish, or bluish sheen, blackish or blackish-grey upperparts, and pure white underparts except some black on the undertail coverts and vent.
The male sometimes adopts the same posture as the female. During this time, the only vocalization made is a one note "hum". During copulation, the male, coming ashore, mounts the female and occasionally flaps its wings loudly. After this, the male returns to the water and preens itself. The female stays ashore for a maximum of about 23 minutes ...
Loons most often make their nests in logs, bog mats, and the edges of rocks. During the incubation of their waterfront nest, they will slip away into the safety of the water only in an emergency.
Loons also need natural shorelines close to the water to nest, Prestby said. That’s because loons have webbed feet that are more like flippers, he said, so they can’t walk around on land, like ...
The female-biased sexual size dimorphism observed in many taxa evolved despite intense male-male competition for mates. [28] In Osmia rufa , for example, the female is larger/broader than males, with males being 8–10 mm in size and females being 10–12 mm in size. [ 29 ]
"The new fossil expands that similarity to the skull," Torres added, showing that Vegavis had a beak suited to fish hunting along with musculature adapted for pursuit diving, like loons and grebes.
Members of the family Gavidae are known as loons in North America and divers in Great Britain and Ireland. [8] The International Ornithological Congress uses the name red-throated loon for this species. [9] "Diver" refers to the family's underwater method of hunting for prey, while "red-throated" is a straightforward reference to the bird's ...