{"id":21579,"date":"2024-10-16T00:10:31","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T06:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=21579"},"modified":"2024-10-15T20:11:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-16T02:11:34","slug":"grebe-vibes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/16\/grebe-vibes\/","title":{"rendered":"Grebe Vibes"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY HARRY WEEKES<\/em><\/p>\n

Hilary and I canoed across Pettit Lake on one of those impeccable days in early October\u2014clear 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\u2014some kind of bird swimming next to shore.
\n\u201cIs that a gull?\u201d
\nOddly, I asked this question not because I thought the bird was a gull, but because I knew that it wasn\u2019t.
\nSomething about how the bird was moving, even at the resolution of \u201cwhite speck in the background,\u201d gave me \u201cnot gull vibes.\u201d
\nI pulled out the binoculars. Sure enough, not a gull.
\n\u201cClark\u2019s grebe. That\u2019s cool. I\u2019ve never seen one here before.\u201d
\nAs 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.
\nFor starters, while mergansers cruise low, this bird was just a little more upright. Where a merganser\u2019s head is long with a shaggy crest, this bird\u2019s 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.
\nThe binoculars came out again.
\n\u201cWhat the\u2026? It\u2019s another grebe. But a pied-billed, or a horned. Or something.\u201d
\nOver 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\u2019s grebe looking like a chaperone to a small flock of eared grebes. (That\u2019s what I came up with\u2014eared 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.
\nUntil October 5, I would have said I had never seen a grebe of any kind at Pettit. Therefore, grebes did not exist there.
\nNow, 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.
\nWhat 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\u2019s and eared grebes? Do they recognize one another as members of the same family? Are these eared grebes actually members of the same family?
\nOf 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\u2014a little pocket of wild knowledge.<\/p>\n

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\u2014Georgia and Simon are fledging in North Carolina, and Penelope is fledging in Vermont.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY HARRY WEEKES Hilary and I canoed across Pettit Lake on one of those impeccable days in early October\u2014clear 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\u2014some kind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21580,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,34],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-commentary","8":"category-science-place"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21581,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21579\/revisions\/21581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}