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Bird's-Eye View - A Bit Deceiving: Those creatures bobbing on the water are not always birds of a feather
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Photo
Grebes hang out with ducks, but their bills are more like a chicken's.
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Published: December 16, 2008
If it walks like a duck and swims like a duck and looks like a duck, you know it's a duck, right?
Not always.
Late autumn is when an interesting variety of ducks and other waterfowl start showing up on lakes and ponds. In the summer, the variety is quite limited. Mallards, wood ducks and Canada geese are the only ones that commonly breed in our area. But as winter approaches, more and more head south.
These birds fly south to where they can find open water for the safety and food it offers. Among the most reliable are ruddy ducks, hooded mergansers and ring-necked ducks, but others, such as blue-winged and green-winged teal, Northern pintails, and buffleheads, can usually be found over the course of the winter. Lesser and greater scaups, gadwalls, American wigeons, canvasbacks and redheads may also show up, to the delight of birders.
And there's another bird that is almost always mixed in with these feathered flotillas. At first glance, you are sure that it's some kind of duck. It's a little smaller than most, but not by much. It behaves like the diving ducks, floating on the surface, and then occasionally diving underwater for several seconds and emerging some distance away.
It looks similar to a duck, but if you get a closer look through binoculars, you'll see that the bill is not very ducklike. It's shaped more like a chicken's beak, short and rather blunt, but not flattened. Especially in summer, but often in winter, you can see a distinctive dark band around the pale pill. This is where the pied-billed grebe gets its name. Pied means two-colored, or multicolored.
These birds are rarely seen on land. But if you did, you would see that the feet are different, too. Unlike the webbed feet of ducks, the toes of grebes are lobed. Another way to distinguish these birds is to look for a characteristic behavior. If ducks are close to the bank of a lake or pond and you approach them, they will usually paddle or fly away to a safer distance. Grebes rarely fly to escape. They dive and swim. They have two methods of diving. One is like the diving ducks. They arch from a sitting position on the surface and enter the water head first. But the other way is unique to grebes. If they feel that you are getting too close, they will simply sink in the water, usually until they are entirely submerged. But occasionally, they will sink until just the head is above water. They are like little submarines. From this position, the bird can feel like it is safely concealed, but still keep an eye on the intruder.
For grebes, diving is not only a means of escape, but that is how they get their food. They eat and feed their young a wide variety of fish, crayfish and insects, such as dragonfly nymphs.
The Pied-Billed Grebe breeds throughout the United States and parts of Canada and has nested in all regions of the state. But breeding has not been documented in Forsyth County.
This bird does have some unusual breeding behavior. Grebes usually lay six or seven eggs, not on land like most ducks and geese, but on floating nests of cattails, lilies, bulrushes and other aquatic vegetation. The chicks can swim within an hour of hatching, but they prefer to climb on the backs of the parents for the first week.
The best place to find Pied-Billed Grebes is Salem Lake. For directions and more information about this area, go to www.forsythaudubon.org, click on "Birding Spots" and select Salem Lake.
□ Join the Audubon Society of Forsyth County for its Christmas Bird Count. The group will be looking for grebes and a number of other birds on Dec. 27.
Anyone interested in participating should contact Linda Davis at davisl@mindspring.com.
■ Bird's-Eye View is a joint column by Ron Morris and Phil Dickinson. Today's column was written by Morris. Morris retired after 24 years as curator at the N.C. Zoo. He has studied birds around the world and is currently the vice president of the Audubon Society of Forsyth County. Dickinson is a legal writer. He has been an active birder for 15 years, and is a past president of the Audubon Society of Forsyth County and heads the conservation committee. If you have a birding question or story idea, write to Bird's-Eye View in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, N.C. 27101-3159, or send an e-mail to birding@wsjournal.com. Please type "birds" in the subject line.
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