With beautiful calm, sunny weather I was able to find the Western Grebe this afternoon, Wednesday, at 4 PM. It was straight out from the parking area, swimming, snoozing and preening. Over about an hour it swam leisurely west until it was behind the bluff. I was able to pick it up again by scanning from the State Park shore.
I noticed a couple things; it doesn't associate with the Red-necked Grebes at all. Once when crossing paths with another Grebe it dove and swam underneath to avoid a close encounter. Many times it looked like it had something trailing behind like a tail extension, but was only dragging a leg. I've seen other birds stretch their legs, but this guy seemed to do in constantly mostly the right leg. Sometimes he would windmill his leg around the side of his body. I don't think anything was wrong, maybe it just felt good. When past the bluff toward the State Park he resumed actively feeding, diving about every 30 seconds and staying down about 20 seconds each time. He came up with a fish on very many of those dives. This lasted about 1/2 hour. He then resumed swimming out to the northwest in a straight line, but not diving anymore. He must have been full. When I left at 6 PM he was still visible in the scope. Gary Kohlenberg -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --