One thing I love about visiting southern states is that some of the birds I see in Minnesota are so much more camera friendly. Pied-billed grebes are shifty in Minnesota, they don’t trust anyone staring at them for too long or they submerge and resurface further away. While in Corpus Christi, my buddy Clay took me to a place with a ton of great waterfowl and some rather obliging grebes. The above bird is an adult pied-billed grebe.
They even showed me their grebe toes. How do you like them apples, not webbed like a duck at all. Let’s get a closer look:
Look at that crazy foot…wonder if this will lead to a slew of foot fetish comments getting clogged in the blog spam filter? The feet of the grebe are far back on the body and the lobed toes do aid it as it swims underwater. They really can’t walk on land very well. Ask yourself if you have ever seen one on land?
Here’s a first year pied-billed grebe–it barely has any pie on its bill.
This grebe was so young that it still had the stripes on its face and was begging for food aggressively from its parent.
The adult bird was trying to preen its feathers, but the younger bird pecked and pecked while peeping in a high pitched tone incessantly. Periodically the adult would nonchalantly reach down, grab a minnow and hand it to the begging young and then go back to preening. I wonder how the adults teach the young to get their own food when the young are this aggressive when they are about the same size as the adult. Perhaps the adults just flee in terror of the incessant begging?
Anyway, it was fun to spend time with brown birds with freaky toes.
So, grebes and coots are closely related, yes? Grebes kind of look like a mudhens drabber cousin.
Lovely and informative series. Thanks! That is a very interesting foot indeed.
I’ve never seen a grebe foot before. Kinda freaky and kinda awesome!
Nice shots!! I have had the same experience with grebes in New England, but no such trouble in Florida. Maybe the warm weather makes them less suspicious. Anyway, I got a close-up shot of a Eurasian Coot’s foot – it’s lobed too – weird looking like something made out of rubber.
Lobate toes practically define the Grebe Family Podicepedidae and while coots also have lobed toes, they are not closely related to grebes. This is one of many examples of convergent evolution, where a similar trait evolves in two taxa that do not share a most recent common ancestor. I have have often wondered why lobate toes did not evolve more often as it seems to be such a great compromise between fully webbed feet and freely independent digits and might fit so many scenarios?
We have quite a few Great Crested Grebes that breed on the canal behind my house and they really do flee when the chicks are getting too big. Either by diving or by simply flying away. I love watching them every year, especially when the chicks are still carried around on the adults’ back.
today’s post good example of why i check birdchick daily. I learn and am amazed. Hats off.
OK – more to learn. How is it that the bill of the pied-billed grebe can change it’s color so completely in a relatively short time? I’ve asked others and no one knows. It’s made of hard keratin – like your finger nails. I assume it grows about the same rate.
I don’t know about the relative rate of growth Larry, but you are right that a bird’s bill is composed of keratin. This sheath of armor covers the bony structure of the bill and is constantly being replaced. It is also subject to radical color changes in short periods of time in a number of different species. Like a fine knife, a bird’s bill is a highly refined tool that needs regular care to function at it’s best, only in in one case the force of renewal is external and in the other it is from within.