Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Watery Wednesday: Pied Billed Grebe

One of the smaller waterfowl that we see in my neck of the woods, at least during the warmer months, is the pied-billed grebe. They typically can be found on lakes and ponds, especially ones with plenty of vegetation.
They eat a variety of different types of prey from aquatic insects to crustaceans, fish and frogs. They catch their food by diving under the water, where they are excellent swimmers. In fact when there are predators around they prefer to sink under the water and swim away rather then taking flight.
Although they are commonly confused as ducks grebes do not have webbed feet like ducks do. Their feet have long lobbed toes which are connected by webbing in the middle. This pied-billed grebe that I photographed at Crex Meadows back in September of 2008 was kind enough to give me a good view of one of his feet.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love that first image. What a lovely portrait it is.

Anonymous said...

Great series of photos! Such a cute little bird.

Eve said...

Oh my - what an agile bird. He's a pretty little thing!

Anonymous said...

I think he/she might have been waving at you! hehehe

Such a cute lil guy/gal.

Swing by my page for a tour w/ Gus Gus & Daisy - Ducks on my parent's farm.

Happy WW!

mick said...

An interesting bird and great photos - especially the second one!

Arija said...

Geeeze you are clever, you even get Grebes to perform tricks for you! Wonderful shots.

Tulip said...

cute little duck swimming in a cool water.