Know your grebes

The Horned Grebe (Podiceps auritus) (ebird, wikipedia) is a common grebe in the family Podicipedidae.

Here in Vancouver, you can often find these birds near the coastline during the fall and winter months. Once spring arrives, they move to inland lakes to breed. As a result, I rarely get a chance to see them in their striking breeding plumage.

I find them fascinating if enigmatic birds. Shy and rightfully suspicious of humans, they can be difficult to photograph as they like to keep their distance from the shore.

My technique is to wait until they dive in search of food and run to the shore, trying to predict where they’ll resurface. My mammalian guesses are often wrong, but once in a while I’m lucky and get a few photographs that aren’t bad. I’m no longer self-conscious of the onlookers who see me running along the beach and kneeling in the sand waiting for a shot.

Like all too many birds, Horned Grebes are undergoing rapid population declines and are classified as Vunerable by the ICUN (International Union for Conservation of Nature).