The Loon: A Different Bird

Pastor Gary Oser

Genesis 1:21 says, “God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind, and God saw that it was good.”

One of those winged birds was the loon. I want to share with you about this bird from the book, A Closer Look at the Evidence.

The loon is designed quite differently from almost all other birds. While the bodies of most birds are light and as aerodynamic as possible, the loon’s body is heavier, allowing it to sink in the water until only its head is above water. It controls its ability to float by inflating or deflating tiny air sacs under its skin. When flying at high altitude, where air is thin, the loon can conserve oxygen by limiting the flow of blood to its massive leg muscles.

The loon has a perfectly developed reflex which limits the flow of blood to its wings and digestive tract during underwater dives. This allows the loon to hold its breath for long periods of time. Although an average dive lasts about 40 seconds, three-minute dives that cover 300-400 yards are quite common. Astounding dives have been documented where loons have held their breath for as long as 15 minutes while swimming underwater for over two miles.

Both common sense and the laws of probability tell us that these unique abilities could not have evolved by chance processes or random mutations. The loon could not have developed its unique diving ability in some step-at-a-time manner.

The system had to work perfectly from the beginning. There is only one accurate explanation—the Creator God! As Psalm 86:10 so well says, “For You are great and do wondrous deeds; You alone are God!”