Diving Loon
A Loon can dive a few hundred feet below the water surface kicking its paddle feet. A Common Loon is black and white to our eyes. If it were blue, these colors would be seen a hundred feet down when all the other colors would have faded to black. That’s what colors do underwater, they get absorbed. Red turns to black 20 feet down but blues turn to black a lot farther below.
I like to use feathers of the species I am carving but mostly this is not possible for several reasons. Either the feathers are too small or they are not legal to use. For this piece, I still used a water bird’s feathers, although they are from a mallard, a duck.