They fly to large rivers larger or bodies of water like the Great Lakes. Then they wait for the small lakes to open to begin the nesting season. They keep checking the situation at their home lakes by taking day trips back and forth. A. Loons are completely flightless without every single one of their feathers. But wait-there's more.
Loons have relatively heavy bodies and small wings-both adaptations for diving deep into water.
With a complete set of flight feathers, their wings have just about the minimum amount of surface area to hold up their bodies. To minimize the time that they are flightless, loons molt all the feathers at once. It takes a lot of energy and body resources to grow feathers. Loons grow a lot of large, stiff feathers all at once. There are 11 primary feathers and 22-23 secondary feathers on each wing.