Do You Think I'm Sexy? Uh...
by Dave McBee
The Grebe is a roughly duck-sized water bird, slate-grey with a white breast and neck. It has a narrow, tapering beak and an elegant, swan-like neck. Great flocks of them used to show up here in Puget Sound and on nearby freshwater lakes every winter, and then disappear mysteriously (more on that later...) in the spring. But the Western grebe's numbers are dropping precipitously, and no one really knows why, though I do have a theory.
Bellingham Bay, about 75 miles north of Seattle, was the winter home to 62,000 Western grebes twenty years ago; 3,000 showed up last year. Lake Union, in the middle of Seattle, sheltered close to 200 ten years ago; this winter I've counted five birds. Dave Nysewander, of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), tells us that an 85-95% decline in Western grebe populations is consistent all along the Pacific coast of the U.S. and Canada, except for a small area near Los Angeles where they may actually be increasing slightly. He tells us that the reasons for this decline are unknown.
Is it tied to overfishing? Is it due to the warmer weather along the coast due to el Nino events? Is there something in the environment that has resulted in reduced breeding success? A lack of funding has meant that all the WDFW has been able to afford to do is fly over the wintering areas twice each season. That's not enough, so they're hoping to get at least 'threatened' status for the Western grebe to get enough federal funding for more specific studies. Nysewander adds that of the 18 species of "diving ducks" in Washington, the numbers for 15 have dropped similarly. The exceptions are mergansers and harlequin ducks (the latter of which does not feed on fish, but on marine crustaceans and such among the shoreline rocks), and he assured me that, "the buffleheads are holding their own!" Indeed! Holding their own what? Your next question may well be where do the Western grebes spend the rest of the year, and are their numbers down there as well? They spend their breeding season on freshwater lakes and marshes inland, east of the coastal mountain range, from northern Alberta to the American Great Basin, and well into the central states.
The fact that they disperse over such a vast area hasn't made it any easier to gather data, in fact, there is no good data for their breeding sites.
As to the 'mysterious' ways referred to earlier, after being aware of their comings and goings for a couple years I realized that I'd never seen even one in the air. If startled they'd rush away along the surface of the water, or dive, surfacing up to tens of yards away. Starting in late October they'd arrive: one day there'd be five or six, by week's end there'd be a couple dozen, and then by the end of the month there'd be three flocks of 50 to 75 birds bobbing purposefully at three distinct locations on Lake Union ('site loyalty' - returning each year to the same location - has been noted among wintering Western grebes, though if conditions are poor enough they will move to more productive waters). In the spring, their numbers simply decrease until they're gone.
I asked other folks who spend time on the water locally, and none of them could recall ever seeing one of them in flight. I'm on the water at all odd hours of the day, so I surmised that they had to be arriving and departing at night.
Checking into various field guides and bird books, I learned some embarrassing facts: the flight of the Western grebe has been described (by humans, of course) as "labored, slow, and awkward," (and just how well do humans swim, to be fair?) their feet hang down ungracefully from the rear end of their bodies, and their necks sag. Well, if people were saying things like that about me, I'd be taking the red-eye, too.
Not to mention the fact that "slow and awkward" flight leaves them vulnerable to fast predators such as peregrine falcons and hawks. The aft-positioning of their feet makes possible the embarrassing behavior that has made the Western grebe the darling of birders everywhere, and the butt of snide and derisive remarks from everyone else.
When they are at their breeding sites, marshes and rushy lakes, they do something in the course of selecting a mate that the biologists call "barging." A male and a female, or two males and a female, paddle so incredibly hard and fast with their big-ass flat, widely-lobed feet that they "pop wheelies,'' lifting all but their feet fully out of the water as they race across their marshes, with their wings held oddly akimbo and their necks arched, looking to all the world like "Winged Victory" on amphetamines. If you doubt me, go straight to your library and check out the video ''Meet the Grebes" or some general bird courtship tape. I'm reasonably sure the Western grebe will be featured in it. Even though both the male and the female take part, I consider their display to be one of the most bizarre and pathetic pleas for nookie by any of God's creatures.
Which brings us to my theory.
I think the planet - "Mother Nature," "Gaia," whatever you wish to call it, has just gotten fed up with such demeaning antics that she, it, whatever...might be thinking about eliminating the Western grebe...for conduct unbecoming. Which brings us to something I saw on the Jerry Springer Show. 'Bubba,' some big studly yokel with boots and a cowboy hat, was trying to convince some bimbette to choose him over some other yokel (who may have been a cousin, either his, or hers) as he loudly proclaimed, "I got a trailer, two dogs, and two pickup trucks! I got ev'ythang yaw need, woman!" Realizing he was actually bragging, even Jerry's audience was momentarily stunned into silence. We'd better be careful. We may be next.
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