Baby Pied-billed Grebe Is Fed Live Minnows

July 7, 2009: The Pied-billed Grebe (Podilymbus podiceps, order: Podicipediformes, Family: Podicipedidae) is a pelagic bird, spending all of its life in the water.

This baby has been with us a couple of weeks. He is growing fast and weighed 34 grams this morning. His current home is an incubator in ICU at IBRRC. Most of the time he snuggles into a soft feather duster. The floor of his home is covered with a towel, and there is a small mirror, so he has a friend.

He spends about 45 minutes to an hour in the incubator, and then hes ready to eat, in his own pool. We feed him tiny pieces of smelt and live minnows. When he is put into his pool, he immediately defecates, just as he would in the wild, when he would jump off his parent's back and into the water. He swims around and is fed. We put our open hand in the water for him to swim into, when he is ready to get out. Then he goes back into the incubator, snuggling into the feather duster once more.




When he is fully feathered and given a thumbs up by our veterinarian, he will be put into one of our outdoor pools, with other grebes. Or he may be transferred to another wildlife center which has grebes like him. Eventually, he will be banded and released into the wild.

"The Pied-billed Grebe is rarely seen in flight. It prefers to escape predators by diving, and it migrates at night. However, it can fly, and stray individuals have reached Hawaii and Europe.

Although it swims like a duck, the Pied-billed Grebe does not have webbed feet. Instead of having a webbing connecting all the toes, each toe has lobes extending out on the sides that provide extra surface area for paddling.

The downy chicks can leave the nest soon after hatching, but they do not swim well at first and do not spend much time in the water in the first week. They sleep on the back of a parent, held close beneath its wings. By the age of four weeks, the young grebes are spending day and night on the water.

For the first ten days their response to danger is to climb onto a parent's back. After that, when danger threatens, they dive under water."

Source: Cornell Lab of Ornithology: All About Birds

See our website here: http://www.ibrrc.org/

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• pied-billed
• grebe
• baby
• chick
• pelagic
• water
• IBRRC
• nature
• wildlife

[beeferonie]

This is a very cute bird and is still doing very well. It is now self feeding cut up smelt and has tried to go after the minnows

and the hand is my hand

[MyWildlifeVideos]

And you did a great job of catching the little minnows and feeding them to the baby grebe. I think he weighed 42 grams on Friday. (The hand belongs to one of our excellent interns at IBRRC.)

[RebeccaSigns]

This video was just delightful.  Bless you for your hard and loving work. He/she is DARLING.

[MyWildlifeVideos]

We have amazing staff, interns, and volunteers at IBRRC.

[SPICESMUGGLER71]

These are very unusual birds that spend all their non-flying time on water. Their legs are so close to their tails that they cannot stand or walk. If they end up on land far from water, they're in danger as they can only take flight from water and they can't move fast on land.

[Eyewash03]

I'm pretty sure that I saw one of these birds today. I live in southwest Virginia and this is the closest I have come to finding out what it was. I didn't get a good look at it, but it was in a shallow creek about 10 wide and could swim underwater very efficently.

[skatedustskate]

its almost big enough to fry up

[ath1931]

thanks for the vid! very cute and great work!

[anmoose]

Amazing! The individual care and love that goes into giving one tiny bird the chance at a full life. I do wish I could be that hand he climbed onto...