BY HARRY WEEKES
Hilary and I canoed across Pettit Lake on one of those impeccable days in early October—clear blue skies, no wind, the aspens changing colors enough to spot the distant hills with pockets of yellow and orange. On the far side of the lake there was a small dot in the water—some kind of bird swimming next to shore.
“Is that a gull?”
Oddly, I asked this question not because I thought the bird was a gull, but because I knew that it wasn’t.
Something about how the bird was moving, even at the resolution of “white speck in the background,” gave me “not gull vibes.”
I pulled out the binoculars. Sure enough, not a gull.
“Clark’s grebe. That’s cool. I’ve never seen one here before.”
As we crossed the lake, another bird cut across the water. Most commonly, this would be a merganser. But I was getting some very non-merganser vibes, as some things were just off.
For starters, while mergansers cruise low, this bird was just a little more upright. Where a merganser’s head is long with a shaggy crest, this bird’s head was like its body, a bit more compact, with no feathers poking out. And where a merganser creates a smooth wake, this bird produced one that was a little bit rough.
The binoculars came out again.
“What the…? It’s another grebe. But a pied-billed, or a horned. Or something.”
Over the next day and a half I got to see the grebes repeatedly. First, when they formed a mixed flock and cruised around together, the larger Clark’s grebe looking like a chaperone to a small flock of eared grebes. (That’s what I came up with—eared grebes in their fall and winter colors.) Then, when the eared grebes broke off on their own and spent the morning hunting in the shallows. Here they demonstrated all their grebe-ness: making little chuckling noises to one another, leaping up in little arcs as they dove underwater, and periodically showing a foot complete with its lobed toes.
Until October 5, I would have said I had never seen a grebe of any kind at Pettit. Therefore, grebes did not exist there.
Now, I know differently. Pettit is grebe country. And in one fell swoop, I was reminded of how wonderful and generative and expansive this kind of encounter is. With the small birds circling in front of me, the questions popped up like the birds themselves.
What do they eat? Are they just stopping over? How long will they stay? Do grebes commonly form mixed flocks? Is there any relationship between Clark’s and eared grebes? Do they recognize one another as members of the same family? Are these eared grebes actually members of the same family?
Of course, I am a long way from being able to speak grebe or figure out any answers to these questions. I content myself watching their small flotilla cruise the lake—a little pocket of wild knowledge.
Harry Weekes is the founder and head of school at The Sage School in Hailey. This is his 53rd year in the Wood River Valley, where he lives with Hilary and two mini-Dachshunds. The baby members of their flock have now become adults—Georgia and Simon are fledging in North Carolina, and Penelope is fledging in Vermont.