Grebes – Horned and Red-necked.

April 13 2017. LaSalle Marina Burlington and Bronte Marina Oakville ON.  Grebes – they’re sort of raffish. I think raffish is the right word, if it means (which I believe it does) defying convention in a mild, erratic and somewhat dashing way. Yes, raffish will do. It’s as if creation intended to make a duck but it came out a bit wrong, with lobed rather than webbed feed, a tendency to sink sometimes, and an appearance of being a little un-combed rather than smooth and handsome.

Every year we have the pleasure of the company of three, sometimes five, grebe species; in warmer weather only that is, they all leave for the winter. Let the lakes freeze. But come spring they return, some just passing through, one or two staying to breed. I watch for them every April and yes, they’re back.

Horned Grebes gather along our lakeshore for a week or two, or three, and there are a few reliable places to go and admire them up close. They deserve admiration; just look at the photos above and below, gorgeous golden ear-tufts, chestnut neck and along the waterline, and piercing red eyes. Getting a decent photo took a lot of patience: to keep myself from being conspicuously silhouetted I had to sit low among some large boulders and then wait for one to make its way inshore and close enough. It was diving for whatever they eat and perhaps one in four photos showed just a puddle or a vanishing wingtip or foot.

Inspired by the Horned Grebes I went to a nearby marina where Red-necked Grebes return to nest each year. They are encouraged to stay by someone, maybe the harbour authority, who anchors a tire in a nicely boat-quiet corner of the marina, the grebes use it as a suitable semi-dry platform on which to build a nest. It is within a very few feet of a harbour-side path and the countless morning-strollers, joggers, dogs-with-owners, and wound-up pre-schoolers stop to admire, or bark, or just smile, point and wonder at them. As I watched, the grebes seemingly snoozed, floating at all times close to the tire to stake their claim to this, their territory for a spring and summer. The vast majority of Red-necked Grebes choose to nest much further north and west of here and the handful of pairs that settle in this and other nearby marinas are a mysteriously disjunct population.

And the others, the rest of the handful?  Well Pied-billed Grebes (above), curious to look at and even stranger if heard calling on territory, can be found in southern Ontario, breeding on small weedy lakes and ponds. Eared Grebes and Western Grebes are just occasional stray visitors; a pity. Eared Grebes are cute, like mini-Horned Grebes in a way and Western Grebes in spring are majestic and elegant – if still raffish.