Summer in Maine means time at our beautiful lakes. And not just for people  — birds, too! Many times, we have taken our canoe out for quiet paddling and fishing, lingering for long hours of swimming in the refreshing water. Being the birders that we are, none of these activities is done without our eyes and ears also tuned in to the birds around us.

Visit any number of Maine lakes and you’ll likely see (and hear) loons, perhaps with their babies on their backs or paddling closely alongside the adult. And nothing compares to the lonely yodels echoing across the water under an evening sky. There are probably ospreys plunging through the water’s cool surface, rising with a fish in its talons. Maybe at “your” lake, there’s an eagle or two lurking nearby, waiting to steal that fish!

At the lake our family has been enjoying for decades, we see and hear loons, and an osprey often turns our head as it bee-lines over our heads while we’re swimming. But we have come to take great delight in those species not typically thought of as “water birds.” For example, when we take a late-afternoon swim this time of year, more often than not, we see a family of crows passing back and forth over the water, cawing to each other as if to say, “Come on in from the water now, it’s time for dinner.” During almost every visit to the lake, at least one ring-billed gull flies from one end to the other; why and where it is going is known only to the bird, but when we see it, we know we’re at “our” lake. From the shore, we often look up at the electrical lines along the road to see a pair of mourning doves—the same pair as last year, and the year before?

For the past season or so, we haven’t heard or seen the phoebe that used to come and go in the alders along the shore. Maybe the old shed at the house nearby, where it used to build its nest, finally had to be torn down. There’s the song sparrow that we can always hear but rarely see as we float in the cool, clear water; likewise, the red-eyed vireo. Occasionally, we’re graced by the rattling of a belted kingfisher — we can’t help but stop whatever we’re doing to watch it zip by, with its big, hardy bill ready to snatch a fish.

Perhaps our favorite is the eastern kingbird. A pair of them often perches on a snag along the shore, one on one branch, the other on a branch below. They dart out from the overhang and, like acrobats, capture perhaps the same deer flies and other insects we duck under the water to avoid.

People often talk about the “dog days of summer.” As we write this column, it’s a hot, humid, mid-80s day. The kind of “dog day” that lures us to the lake, where we enjoy the “bird days of summer.”