Mystery Bird: Pied-billed Grebe, Podilymbus podiceps

seen those lobes before, but it appears that the feet can't work out whether they should be at the front or "at the back", especially when the "back wants to be at the front"...

That's one cute scientific name. "Run for your lives! It's the attack of the pod-people!"

I saw these guys yesterday, when I got to lead a docent tour of the Carpinteria salt marsh for some visiting members of the Angeles chapter of the Sierra Club.

I'm going with pied-billed grebe again. I might not be right, but at least I'm consistent ;)

I'm going with Pied-billed Grebe.

OK David and John, I get it "pod" as in the Pied-billed Grebe (Podilymbus podiceps)- isn't this the only grebe that has this coloring?

David please explain your clues, I get one (I think) but not the other!

LOL Kim,

Of course, Wikipedia has it incomplete again... the genus is indeed Podilymbus and is a combination of Latin words derived from podex meaning "rump" and pedis for "foot" (podici-pes) with the Greek koλÏμβo (kolymbo) for "dive", hence my first statement that the feet didn't know whether they should be at the front or "at the back"... and the species name is as you correctly stated above, podiceps, again a combination of "rump" and this time ceps, a form of caput meaning "head" (we use the form in words such as "biceps", "triceps", "quadriceps" referring to the number of heads or insertions of a muscle) and so the "back wants to be at the front"...!

Somewhat convoluted... but I agree that there are few other grebes that have this coloration, excpet perhaps a Least Grebe

Id also go with Pied-billed Grebe because of the "feet" and colors ;)