Seasonal 'weird laughter'

"Celia Thaxter's Garden,'' on Appledore Island, by Childe Hassam.

"Once more their weird laughter of the loons comes to my ear, the distance lends it a musical, melancholy sound.  For a dangerous ledge off the lighthouse island floats in on the still air the gentle trolling of a warning bell as it swings on the rocking buoy; it might be tolling for the passing of summer and sweet weather with that persistent, pensive chime."

-- From the writer Celia Thaxter, who spent much of her life on Appledore Island, in the Isles of Shoals, off New Hampshire.

White Island (left) and Seavey Island (right) in the Isles of Shoals at high tide.