Horned Grebe

Horned Grebe aka. Slavonian Grebe (foreign)
Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland, California, USA
April 2019
Member of the Grebe Family
§A Waterdance of Grebes§

~true bird fact~ These Grebes swallow their own feathers in order to create a 'plug' in their stomach, which helps them filter out fish bones and other harder to digest materials. Parent Grebes will even feed their young these feathers, to get this system going earlier. Makes you wonder why we humans don't eat feathers.

 ~real bird legend~ According to the Blackfoot Native tribe, the Horned Grebe is always the first to spot danger. This is because the Old Man trickster fooled a bunch of ducks into dancing for him with their eyes closed. In this state he was able to bonk them on the head and kill them, but this Grebe, the smallest of the ducks present, peeked, and was able to escape and sound the alarm. This is also how he got his red eyes.

How Endangered Are They? Well, let's start with the good news- there are a lot of these Grebes still remaining- somewhere between 200 and 500,000. Another item to be optimistic about- they have a pretty global distribution living all across North America and Eurasia. However, these birds are going fast. Within the last 30 years, their global numbers have declined by 30%. The picture is much worse in North America where the declined is a much steeped 79%.  The reason? All the usual stuff, all our fault. Climate change, human disturbance of breeding habitat, the destruction of wetlands, and oil spills. We've even messed up their food supply of aquatic insects by introducing Rainbow Trout into bodies of water for fishing purposes. These birds are really getting it from every angle, sadly. My hope is that having survived the machinations of the trickster god, the Horned Grebes can survive us too.