What Does a Loon Sound Like? Wails, Yodels and Tremolos

The four main loon calls

The common loon has a small vocabulary of four main calls, and each one has a clear job.

The wail: the sound of northern lakes

The wail is the loon’s most famous call and the one people usually mean when they talk about “the call of the loon.” It is a long note of up to three parts that rises and falls, often described as mournful or haunting. It is strikingly similar to a wolf’s howl, and visitors to northern lakes sometimes mistake it for one.

Despite its sad sound, the wail is a practical contact call. Mates use it to find each other across a lake, and a parent and chick call back and forth when they have drifted apart. A pair may also answer each other’s wails in duets on still evenings.

The tremolo: the “laughing” call

The tremolo is a fast, wavering series of up to about ten notes that sounds like crazy laughter. It is often linked to the old expression “crazy as a loon.”

Loons give the tremolo when they are alarmed or excited, for example when a boat comes too close to a nest, an eagle flies over or another loon intrudes. There are different intensities: the more agitated the bird, the higher pitched the call. Paired loons sometimes give tremolos together in a duet.

The tremolo is also the only call loons give in flight. A loon flying over a lake often calls to announce itself to the residents below.

The yodel: a male’s territorial song

The yodel is the longest and most complex loon call, a rising, repeating phrase that can last several seconds. Only males yodel, usually while stretched low over the water with the neck extended. It is a signal to other males: this lake is taken.

Research on banded loons has shown that each male’s yodel is individual. The pitch of the call reveals the male’s body size and condition, so rivals can judge each other without fighting. Even more remarkably, a male that takes over a new territory changes his yodel so it sounds different from the previous owner’s.

The hoot: quiet family talk

The hoot is a short, soft, single note used at close range, between mates or between parents and chicks. It is easy to miss unless you are near the birds. Parents often hoot when calling chicks to come and be fed.

Loon chicks have their own small peeping and begging calls, which grow into adult calls as they mature.

Why do loons call at night?

Loons call at all hours, but the wail, yodel and tremolo are heard more often at night than during the day. Calm night air carries sound across a lake very well, so calls travel farther with less effort. Night is also when territorial males are most active vocally, especially from mid-May to mid-June, when pairs are setting up territories and nesting.

Weather matters too. Studies have found loons call more in cooler weather and when there is little or no rain. In late summer the chorus fades, and on their wintering grounds along the coasts loons are mostly silent.

Loon calls in movies and culture

The loon’s wail has become one of the most recognizable nature sounds in film and television. It is used to suggest wilderness, loneliness or suspense, and it appears in many films that have nothing to do with lakes or with the places where loons actually live. The 1981 film On Golden Pond is one of the best-known films in which loons themselves play a role.

For many people in Canada and the northern United States, loon calls are simply the sound of summer at the cottage or cabin. The bird’s voice is one reason the loon became Minnesota’s state bird and Ontario’s provincial bird. Old folk names for the bird, such as “call-up-a-storm,” came from the belief that its loud cries warned of bad weather.

Where can you hear loons?

In summer, listen on clear lakes across Canada, Alaska and the northern United States, from Maine and the Adirondacks to the Great Lakes states and Montana, or in Iceland. The best chance is on a calm evening or night in late May or June. Keep your distance from nesting birds: a loon giving a tremolo at you is telling you that you are too close.

To learn where these birds go once the lakes freeze, read where do loons go in winter?.