I’ve been working through culling my 11K+ catalogue of bird images and came upon these images of a young grebe and I thought identifying juvenile grebes would make a good post.
As I looked at the first few images I couldn’t tell what type of grebe this was. I wondered if there was a way to tell the difference between red-necked grebe young and horned grebe young. Turns out there is.
Juvenile birds often looks suspiciously similar and attempting to discern waterfowl species from their young is definitely a skill that takes patience and keen attention to detail.
Once I had a look at the two species side by side there were some pretty obvious differences. While the young of both species sport black and white stripes on their heads, the horned grebe chick has a black stripe across the eye, the red-necked grebe chick has a white stripe across the eye. The stripes on the red-necked grebe also include the neck where the pattern on the horned grebe chick are most prominent on the head.
The red-necked grebe also has a yellowish bill compared to the grey-black of the horned grebe. The bill is also shorter on the horned grebe.
Finally, size is a pretty good indicator as well. Horned grebes are much smaller than Red-Necked grebes and their young are quite a bit more “compact” than the Red-necked grebe due to their shorter body.
Juvenile grebes are independent after about 4 weeks but can’t fly until they are between 50-60 days old. Because grebes don’t migrate in flocks, their young often appear “abandoned” until they are old enough to migrate south on their own.
That’s all for this week. I hope you enjoyed learning how to ID grebe chicks with me.