A horned grebe does not disappoint

Reports came in Saturday on the Birding in Central New Jersey GroupMe chat channel that a horned grebe was hanging out with the Canada geese at Mercer County Park. More sightings were reported this morning, and I thought, why not? I’d never seen a horned grebe, let alone one near home. This was likely as good of a chance as I’ll get.

I drove over to the park’s West Picnic Area after lunch and saw hundreds of geese clustered in an inlet near the Lake Mercer marina and along a sheet of ice paralleling the trail that follows the lake shore.

I also spotted two women looking out onto the water and thought they might be birders who’d spotted the grebe, an unusual visitor to Mercer County. They were looking for bald eagles and weren’t aware of the grebe, but we got to chatting and started looking for the grebe.

I wandered up the trail a bit and turned around once I reached the end of the ice sheet because no more birds were in sight. When I walked back, my new friends excitedly pointed to a small gray and white bird making its way in the water. To our delight, it was the grebe.

I fired off a few hasty shots, all of which were fuzzy, and the grebe dove into the water and went out of site. Meanwhile, a hooded merganser showed up and occupied our gaze for a while.

I decided to go back up the trail to see if I could spot the grebe again, and I found it floating in the water just off the end of the ice sheet.

I took a few shots before heading back to alert my new friends. They walked back with me to where the grebe was, and it put on quite a show. It dove, stayed underwater a short while, then popped back up, repeating that pattern for several minutes and giving us time to take several photos.

It was kick to add the horned grebe to my life list, and sharing that experience with others made the day even more special. 🦅