Ambiguous Grebe is apparently contagious.

It's that time of year.  The vultures are flying.  The blackbirds have made any attempts at shrike surveys impossible.  And the grebes are molting.  Some of the Horned Grebes are pretty much still in full winter plumage.

But very soon there will be plenty of muddy-faced birds that people will try to turn into Eared Grebes.  Look at the bills.  Horned has a fairly thick bill that tapers evenly at the tip (and that tip at close range is pale).  Eared's is much thinner with an upturn and is black its entire length.

Anyway, this swan threw me for a second.  It was just too cold to stand at Tiscornia and so I pulled up to the boat launch at North Lake at Grand Mere.  It has a plain black bill without a yellow pip but with a (fairly prominent at some sun angles) salmon gape line.  A trumpeter, right?

 It just didn't look right however and I actually pulled out Sibley to confirm I was remembering the facial feathering correctly.  In the above pic the interface between the bill and the feathering takes an abrupt downward turn while in the below pic the forehead is fairly curved.

 In Trumpeter the bill is longer and more sloped, the bill interface is angled smoothly rather than bending down, and the forehead is quite pointed.  This is a Tundra Swan that lacks the yellow bill pip.  It still has some grayish feathers in the wing coverts and is likely a first spring bird.  Trumpeter is also very similar in size to Mutes, this bird was a size smaller.

No such identification problems with male wood ducks.

 Twenty-five degree air above water in the 30's did not make for great photo conditions, there was a lot of heat shimmer even at close range.

Some flyby mergs in New Buffalo.

Finally a Red-shouldered that perched nicely along US-12.  Somehow it was well into fall before I found one last year.

The sixth season

Here in Berrien we've found that we're not really limited to 4 seasons. While everyone is familiar with spring, summer, and fall, not many people realize that the next season (from about the 3rd week of October through the CBC period) is actually the season of Merganser which precedes winter. With less frigid weather, but still no green or passerine migrants of consequence, I would term the current season Ambiguous Grebe.

Tis the season...
... and another Horned Grebe ...

This one's not so hard. Honestly the majority of the birds today were past the confusing transitional stage though a couple were still barely moving out of winter plumage.

Both Red-throated Loon and Horned Grebes were flying north in numbers out over the lake. This was probably the first time I've seen double digit grebes flying steadily north (though up to 20 or 25 will loaf about off the piers during this period).

Kaufman (1996) agrees that they generally are night migrants though may do so during the day along the coast. We'll see what tomorrow will bring, it should be the start of a prolonged period of south winds (after the last 2 weeks have been dominated by north).


Reference

Kaufman, Ken. Lives of North American Birds. Houghton Mifflin, 1996. Pp 8-9.

Jumping to the real deal

I expected to slowly build up to today's post, figuring that I'd have time to show some various Horned Grebes in confusing moult states before showing an Eared. We-ell, I went out South Pier this afternoon when the sun came out to see if there'd be horned's in close sheltering from the wind. There were. I photo'd some for a bit, then scanned a bit farther out, and immediately picked out a different silhouette, an Eared Grebe.
It was way backlit and the above photo is cropped in a fair bit. It was headed in slowly and then a dog walker decided to stop and talk and the birds started swimming back out, away from the Labrador. Oh well.

The backlit semi-overcast created an exposure challenge, but I managed some workable images. This bird is just starting the moult with a little color coming in behind the eye and a couple black facial feathers. About 40% of the birds looked like this.

About 30% of the birds were in the confusing transition with wisps of ochre behind the eye and some patchy black feathers coming into the face.

A few birds had passed the confusing stage but clearly still have a ways to go...

... to get to this bird whose head is pretty close to being in full breeding condition.

Little Rubyeyes

Horned Grebes don't draw the eye's attention all that often; they're common to see along the pier in migration, very familiar to the fisherman. Given their frequent close approach to the pier I was hoping to be able to target them somewhat on my first sunny morning yesterday.

Two did come in fairly close. Shooting in sunlight can be trickier than overcast since getting the exposure just right can be tricky. I had to do a fair amount of brightening on this image in the shadow of the pier...
The full sun presents the opposite problem, with whites being over-exposed, though the red eyes just pop in the low morning sun

Note the subtle difference in the two birds' head shape and bill size. I don't know that any of the general guides comment on this, but Pyle shows this difference between males and females. The first sunlit bird is a female with a slighter bill and more rounded head than the last bird which has a more wedge-shaped head and a somewhat heavier bill. I'd never noticed this before, though it does probably bear being aware of, give that a female in amongst a bunch of males could give more of an Eared look in a few weeks if a person wasn't careful.

Non-horned grebes and white-throated loons

It's spring. Really. That must mean it's that wonderful time of year for transitional grebe plumages!

Two horned grebes were along the South Pier today. This one was feeding along the edge of the pier, bobbed up right beside me and panicked off to a safer distance. It's interesting how as it really digs for speed its wings are so spread that the tertials aren't connecting the wings to the body.

It settled down at a nice distance, still pretty much in full winter plumage:

The other bird was much farther along in its moult, farther than I expected it to be for mid-March and appears to have passed the most confusing period plumage-wise (though both birds are close enough to easily see the bill shape).

A red-throated loon was diving off the end of the pier out in the murky water where the river empties into the lake. A decent breeze and 3-4 foot waves did not make it easier to grab photos. I'd really like to see an actual red-throated bird. I can't tell if I can imagine a single red feather coming in on the mid-throat at the edge of the bill shadow or it's just an artifact of lighting. Sibley says that they attain breeding plumage sometime in April so hopefully I can find an advanced one in a couple weeks.

A harlequin and a puzzling grebe

This afternoon the sun broke free from the clouds and I made a casual run to the St Joseph beaches with a very modest goal of just finding some Herring gulls to photograph in the sun for once.  Well, I did find a few photo-worthy birds, but at Silver Beach I found a good number of birds sheltering from the mild north winds on the leeward side of the southern pier.

In front of a flock of buffleheads was this smartly-marked duck, no ID problem here:

It's a male harlequin duck with the crisp crescent in front of the eye, white ear patch, and a subtler vertical whitish mark on the neck.  In the very best of lights it did have some bluish gloss.  It didn't have any other white on it, none on the body.  I thought it was probably a first year bird given that it lacks the whitish marks in the tertials that Sibley shows a full winter-plumaged male as having.

There was also a small dark grebe.  My initial reaction when I first saw it was that it was an eared grebe.  With closer study it wasn't holding up that well.  I had called Tim after I got a few shots of the duck and he asked me if there was an eared grebe there too.  He'd seen the duck that morning and seen a/the grebe last night.  Before we could talk further a fisherman appeared behind me and I hung up to try to get photos before the birds were pushed farther out and we didn't talk about it at any length.  I don't know for sure that this is the same bird.

First is my best overall pic of the bird; it was difficult to get a good front-lit photo because of the configuration of the pier and the southern winter sun.  The bird has a dark face.  A typical horned grebe has a very crisp dark gray crown and white cheek and throat.  Per Sibley either species should be in full winter plumage by now, and certainly I can't remember seeing anything but that plumage in horned grebe this time of year.

There are structural clues; an eared grebe typically has the peak of the crown in front of or about even with the eye, in horned this is farther back on the head.  The eared has a thinner and upturned bill.  Horned does have a pale tip to the bill though this can be hard to see and either could probably show it if backlit enough.

The next 2 pics show the head shape, eared has a more peaked crown than horned, this is one of very few birds where looking at the bird as it is going away from you is actually quite helpful.

Another side view of the bird, probably the sharpest of the bill shape (I had to play with the contrast and brightness of this one as it was underexposed)

Here's a composite of my 4 best side views of the head (ignore the one random gray line) followed by old photos I've taken of the two species (eared on the left, horned on the right obviously):

I think the bill of today's bird is thicker than any eared grebe I've ever seen; the maxilla appears convex rather than concave.  I got the suggestion of a pale tip, though again that could be artifactual due to the lighting conditions.  The head seemed to peak behind the eye, but seemed rounder than the typical horned.  I don't know if a first year eared grebe would have a thicker, less up-turned bill than an older one would; Sibley does not show that however.  The other thing to think about on this bird is that the longer I watched it, the more I seemed to see the left leg.  I wonder what a horned grebe would look like that couldn't preen its cheek and chin; I suspect that it would look a great deal like the bird today.

If you go to look for these birds, BE CAREFUL on the pier.  It's covered in ice.  Despite being really careful on the way back, I took a fall and banged the scope down hard (thank goodness it seemed to be unaffected).  I continued to the beach to try photos from a different angle and wondered why my fingers were sticking to the camera, they've never frosted down before.  I looked down and saw my fingers all bloody, I took a picture but decided to spare you the image.