Subject: [Tweeters] Partially leucistic Horned Grebe
Date: Sun May 23 20:48:10 PDT 2021
From: John Riegsecker - jriegsecker at pobox.com

All,

Thursday, May 20, I photographed a partially leucistic Horned Grebe at
Bear River MBR in Utah. After returning home I did some internet
research and thought I would share what I found. Photos of the grebe
are here:

https://skygardener.zenfolio.com/p835320935

I tried to present several angles, and in some photos there is a hint of
the horns.

Birds of the World says that Leucistic Eared Grebe are not uncommon and
have been found breeding. That does not seem to be the case for Horned
Grebe as not many show up in a Google image search. For comparison to
the one I photographed:

https://hamiltonnature.org/birding/birds/photos/three/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nsxbirder/27345913978/in/pool-47087339 at N00

and these two which look more like Eared Grebe to me:

https://www.phillybirdnerd.net/2016/10/last-day-in-vegas.html

Finally, everything you want to know about aberrant Grebe plumage:

https://ps.mnhn.lu/ferrantia/publications/Ferrantia72.pdf

John Riegsecker Gig Harbor
jriegsecker at pobox.com
--
John Riegsecker