Eared grebe

Voice

At colonies a high, plaintive, slightly rising peeep or oo-eek, often in duet and mixed with a fast trilling chatter. Heard mainly from April to June at the breeding site, morning and evening; away from the colony the birds are practically silent.

Identification

Small and dark, with a thin, slightly upturned bill and a high rounded crown that peaks in front of the eye. Breeding birds have a black head, neck and breast, chestnut flanks, fanned golden ear tufts and a red eye. In winter they are dingy grey, the dark cap running below the eye and the greyish cheek ending without a clean border.

Confusion species

Slavonian Grebe is the classic confusion. Black-necked has a finer, upturned bill, a steeper forehead peaking before the eye, and in winter a greyish cheek with a smudged, irregular border; Slavonian shows a straight, pale-tipped bill and a sharply cut, clean white cheek.

Habitat

Shallow, nutrient-rich pools with abundant submerged and floating plants, often in colonies alongside Black-headed Gulls, whose presence gives protection. Outside the breeding season on salt lagoons, salt pans, reservoirs and sheltered coastal water. Takes mostly insects and larvae from the surface and far less fish than other grebes.

Range and movements

Scattered across Europe with an erratic breeding pattern that shifts from year to year; in the Netherlands a scarce breeder of fen marshes and young pools. In Spain it nests in the southern lagoons and winters in enormous numbers in the salt pans of the Ebro delta, the Bay of Cádiz and the Mar Menor.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

Look on shallow pools with a Black-headed Gull colony in May and use the low light of early morning, when the golden plumes really glow. In August and September it pays to scan moulting flocks on larger waters, where summer and winter plumages swim side by side.

Conservation status

Numbers swing sharply with water levels and with the fate of the gull colonies the species nests among. Drying fens, loss of floating vegetation and fish stocking press on the breeding sites, while the key wintering and moulting waters in southern Europe are vulnerable to salt pans and lagoons drying out.