Pied-billed Grebe Gallery
Breeding Plumage
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A Reward Paid in Black & White
One reward for spending all of Mother's Day at Ridgefield was a chance to photograph this pied-billed grebe in breeding plumage in Long Lake. These grebes are so commonly seen at Ridgefield that it's a rare visit when I don't spot one, but they are both small and shy and thus have generally eluded my lens. I got some nice pictures of them this winter, but on this day I got my opportunity to photograph one with a pied bill (they only have it in their breeding plumage).
And to top it off it's doing my favorite pied-billed trait, sinking slowly into the water before diving!
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Pied
There is an audio guide that goes along with the auto tour at Ridgefield, and while the audio at this point is difficult to make out it seems to me they suggest that the pied-billed name comes from the black ring on the bill resembling a pie stain (such as you might find ringing a child's mouth after it eats a piece of pie). I'm not sure if I'm not hearing it correctly or if they are being a bit tongue-in-cheek (not that I would ever do such a thing here!), but I believe the name comes from the old English usage meaning black-and-white (as in the magpie), and which eventually came to mean multi-colored.
Thus I think the name is more Pied Piper than Purple Pieman.
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Three Eyes
This is one of a pair of grebes that were fishing a narrow channel at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. This was the larger of the two and the one catching the most fish. They would frequently vocalize to each other and given that this was taken in April, I suspect that the two grebes were a-courtin’.
There are three eyes visible in this picture, the large eye of the grebe and the two eyes of the fish in its beak. The grebe caught a number of fish but for whatever reason it always ate them with its back to me. This one time, however, it momentarily held the fish where I could see it before quickly turning away and swallowing it out of sight.
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Invasive Species Removal
This grebe was doing a little invasive species removal at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge on a rainy spring day. I was driving on the back half of the auto tour loop when I saw this grebe swimming up ahead with something in its mouth. I couldn't recognize what it was from that distance, but assumed it must be a juvenile bird of some kind. When I got up close, I saw that it was not a bird but a frog, a large species that is not native to Washington.
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Down the Hatch
In this picture, the grebe attempts to swallow the large frog by flipping it up and letting gravity aid the frogs entry down the grebe's extended throat. It wasn't successful on this attempt, but it did manage to swallow it a short while later. A much larger meal than the small fish the grebes often catch, I didn't think there was any way it could down the frog, but soon there was only a webbed foot sticking out of the grebe's bill. There's definitely a little motion blur. I've never seen a grebes neck extended like this, I didn't know they could stretch out that far.
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If I Sound Hoarse …
… it's because I have a frog in my throat. (ba dum)
Proof that the grebe eventually managed to swallow the frog, with only a webbed foot still sticking out. After swallowing even the foot, the grebe swam over to the other side of the channel and sat still for quite some time. I suppose that’s the grebe equivalent of unbuttoning your pants after a Thanksgiving feast.
It was still sitting there when I left.
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Nonbreeding Plumage
A Little Surprise
One of the challenges in shooting at Crystal Springs is that you can have too many subjects. There are a number of mallards and Canada geese plus a smattering of other ducks like wood ducks, wigeon, scaup, bufflehead, and ruddy ducks. They can cluster up and move rapidly across the pond when visitors feed them, which leads to busy backgrounds and distracting wakes in photographs. I bided my time until I not only had the subject that I wanted but also the water looking the way I wanted.
There are a few pied-billed grebes here. These are little birds compared to a mallard or goose and fairly timid by comparison, this was the only one that swam anywhere close to me. Fortunately, most of the other ducks were drawn off by a family tossing cracked corn near the bridge, so I was able to take some nice pictures during the few seconds it was in view.
During the summer when they are in their breeding plumage, pied-bills have a white bill (which gives them their name) with a black vertical band in the middle, but in their nonbreeding plumage they have a more nondescript bill like this one.
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I'm Batman
This little grebe was floating along early one morning, mostly sleeping, in one of the ponds at Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens in Portland. It mostly seemed to just float with the water, although it likely did a little steering with its webbed feet as well. I waited until its eyes were directly lined up with my own, the way that its head is tucked down between its breast and wing reminds me of Batman with his cape pulled up and covering his face.
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The Feather Eaters
This past winter at Ridgefield I was enjoying watching a pied-billed grebe in the little channel beside North Quigley Lake. During the winter you're not supposed to get out of your car on the auto tour, so I was rather startled when my reverie was disturbed by a rap on the window beside me. My first thought was that someone was trying to warn me, perhaps my car was on fire or I was about to be attacked by a wandering bigfoot. But I looked up to see a smiling woman standing patiently outside my car. I rolled down the window and she asked me if the bird I was watching was an eared grebe. I was still a little startled but collected my wits and said no, this was a pied-billed grebe — but in nonbreeding plumage. I'm guessing her bird guide didn't include this plumage, because in this guise they lack the distinctive
black-and-white bill for which they are named.
Another interesting tidbit about pied-billed grebes (and some other grebe species) is that they sometimes eat their small soft feathers when they preen, and also feed them to their young. From what I've read, the thinking is that this helps them regurgitate the parts of their prey that are difficult to digest.
