Banner Photo by Ann Kramer

Featured Bird

MEET THE PIED-billed GREBE (Podilymbus podiceps)  – by Jeff Sinker

Found across most of North America, this small, stocky, short-necked grebe also sports a thick bill that changes color to silver and black during summer months. Pied-billed Grebes favor slow-moving rivers, estuaries, freshwater lakes and ponds, wet fields, and even sewage ponds. As long as the water depth is greater than nine inches, they will remain in the same area to breed if thick emergent vegetation is nearby.

These grebes can also trap water in their feathers, giving them more control over their buoyancy, so you may see a little or a lot of their body above the water. Like other grebes, they also eat a large quantity of their own feathers. It is believed feathers aid in digestion by lining the stomach and intestines, protecting them from inedible prey parts such as bones, which are later regurgitated as pellets.

Pied-billed Grebes build platform nests on the water and within dense emergent vegetation. Cattails, bulrushes and water lilies are favorite habitats. The nest can be enlarged if additional eggs are laid. A typical pair will have 1-2 broods of 2-10 eggs each and they incubate the eggs for 23-27 days. Newly hatched chicks are carried on their parents’ backs for the first week or so of their lives.

Learn more: www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Pied-billed_Grebe

Photo: Pied-billed Grebe by Brad Imhoff/Macaulay Library (see link above)

Range map: blue = year-round; red = breeding (see link above)