Common loon on Caspian Lake
— — the call that carries the length of the lake.
Not only on a wall.
“A glacial lake nearly 800 acres of cold clear water, deep enough to stay quiet in late summer, with a pair of loons most years on the north end. Vermont's loons had been gone from the state by 1980; the population came back through three decades of slow work and now nests on lakes like this one. The call carries across the water before dawn, the long wail and the tremolo, and it sounds older than anything else here. A road around the lake, a small village store, and a lot of held quiet.
Common loon on Caspian Lake, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Caspian Lake sits in Greensboro, Vermont, in Orleans County in the Northeast Kingdom, at an elevation of about 1,394 feet. It covers roughly 789 acres and reaches a maximum depth of around 142 feet. Carved by glacial action, the lake is cold, clear, and oligotrophic, meaning it carries little nutrient load and reads pale blue-green to the bottom in places. The village of Greensboro, with its long-running general store Willey's, sits at the south end. The lake drains north through the Lamoille River system toward Lake Champlain.
The common loon, Gavia immer, vanished as a breeding bird from Vermont by 1980; only seven nesting pairs were left in the entire state. The Vermont Loon Conservation Project, run by the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, has spent forty years rebuilding the population through nesting rafts, signage, and volunteer monitors. Vermont now counts more than a hundred breeding pairs and Caspian is one of the lakes that holds a pair most summers. The wail and the tremolo carry farthest in the still hour before sunrise and after the boats settle for the night.
Loons arrive on Caspian within a week or two of ice-out, usually in late April. Eggs are laid in late May or early June on a small mound at the shoreline, often on a floating raft the conservation project anchors in a quiet cove. Chicks hatch about twenty-eight days later and ride on a parent's back for the first two weeks. Families stay through the summer and the young fledge in early September. Adults move to the Atlantic coast by late October; the lake itself freezes through by mid-December most years.