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Pied-billed Grebe | Podilymbus podiceps
Dikbekfuut | Zampullín picogrueso
The Pied-billed Grebe is a stocky brown grebe with a short, thick bill that carries a black band in breeding plumage. In the region a subspecies of its own, antillarum, breeds in the Greater and Lesser Antilles; in the northern winter birds from North America join them.
Voice
A loud, hollow series that starts with rapid kuk-kuk-kuk notes and turns into a slower, falling cow-cow-cow-cowp; mainly in the breeding season, also from dense vegetation. Wintering birds are usually silent.
Recording: Stanislas Wroza — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
30–38 cm, stocky, with a large head, short neck and fluffy white rear end. The plumage is plain grey-brown, with darker crown and back. The bill is short, deep and chicken-like: in breeding plumage pale greyish-white with a broad black band, with a black throat and a white ring round the dark eye. Outside the breeding season the band is absent, the bill yellowish horn and the throat paler. Juveniles have brown and white stripes on head and neck. When alarmed it often sinks slowly until only the head shows above the water.
Confusion species
Least Grebe Tachybaptus dominicus is smaller and darker, with a thin, pointed bill and a yellow eye. Females and young of Masked Duck Nomonyx dominicus and Ruddy Duck Oxyura jamaicensis also sit low in the water and dive, but have a broad duck's bill, a stiff tail and stripes or a pale cheek on the head. American Coot Fulica americana is slate-grey to black with a white bill.
Habitat
Freshwater lakes and ponds, cattail marshes and other fringing vegetation, reservoirs, rice fields and fish ponds; outside the breeding season also brackish lagoons and larger open waters. It eats fish, crustaceans, aquatic insects and other invertebrates, caught by diving. The nest is a floating platform of plant material among the fringing vegetation.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Breeds in the Bahamas, Cuba, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, and locally in the Virgin Islands and the Lesser Antilles. In Trinidad and Tobago and the ABC Islands scarcer and more local. In the northern winter birds from North America join them, mainly in the Bahamas and the Greater Antilles; what share of the wintering birds comes from the northern mainland is not well known for each island. Beyond the region from Canada through the United States, Mexico and Central America to southern South America.
- Resident
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the Greater Antilles on almost every freshwater reservoir and larger pond with fringing vegetation, most numerous from October to April, when the winter visitors are present. The breeding plumage with the black bill band is mainly seen in spring and summer.
Conservation status
Not threatened; widespread over almost the whole of the Americas. On the islands breeding sites are lost locally through the draining and pollution of wetlands; reservoirs and ponds, on the other hand, give the species new habitat.
Scientific name
Podilymbus podiceps | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Colymbus Podiceps; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Podilymbus was introduced in 1831 by Lesson. Podilymbus is a contraction of Latin podicipes 'feet at the buttocks', the stem of Podiceps, and Ancient Greek kolumbos 'diver', familiar from the old genus name Colymbus. podiceps is the older genus name Podiceps, Latin podex, podicis 'vent' and pes 'foot', kept on here as the specific epithet. The specimen the first description was based on came from South Carolina.