Kelly and tweeters,

That "duck" that turned out to be a grebe could also be a Clark's Grebe. The apparent amount of white in the primaries may be exaggerated by the angle of the photo, but Clark's has more extensive white in the outer wing than Western, which the photo suggests. The Sibley Guide p. 29 has good illustrations of them.

Bob

----- Original Message -----
From: Kelly McAllister
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 7:09 AM
Subject: Re: [Tweeters] dead duck


O.K., I'm convinced that the Bald Eagle on Lake Sammamish is carrying a Western Grebe which won by both the number of diagnoses and the specific characteristics visible in the two photos. Thanks, Larry Schwitters, for referring to the picture in the National Geographic Guide of a Western Grebe in flight. That's a good picture for matching up a number of characteristics, like wing shape and color, that I hadn't looked at. Gary Shugart also supplied an image from the Slater Museum wing photo collection that was a nice match for the bird in both pictures. That wing photo collection can be a valuable tool for identifying birds. I remember using it once to identify a road-killed bird that was mostly wings and little else at the time I found it.

Thanks, everyone, for contributing to this exercise.

Kelly McAllister
Olympia, Washington
----- Original Message -----
From: Kelly Cassidy
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 5:41 AM
Subject: RE: [Tweeters] dead duck


My vote is for a grebe, too, on the basis of the legs trailing well behind with no hint of a tail and the apparently short, stubby wings. The seeming gray in the plumage doesn't look right, but maybe that's a trick of the light.



Kelly




----------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu [mailto:tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Larry Schwitters
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 12:05 AM
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Tweeters] dead duck




Tweeters,



When the Issaquah paper came yesterday Leora and I both said "Western Grebe" at the same time. For some reason the photo in the paper was more obvious than the image on the computer, which still looks like a Western Grebe with it's head laying over its back



Does not the second photo





http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/myseattlepix/photo.asp?photoID=1008602



show two very long and strange legs hanging down? These do not look like duck legs to me. The National Geographic Field Guide has a drawing of a flying Western Grebe that shows off it's long legs. It also lists it as 25 inches long.



Poor bird.



Larry Schwitters

Issaquah



----------------------------------------------------------------------------


_______________________________________________
Tweeters mailing list
Tweeters at u.washington.edu
http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters



------------------------------------------------------------------------------


_______________________________________________
Tweeters mailing list
Tweeters at u.washington.edu
http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters