DNR Staff Report
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Nongame Wildlife Program is asking people to report sightings of red-necked grebes. These birds are about 18-20 inches in length, smaller than a loon, but they also dive and carry their striped chicks on their backs.
They nest along shorelines, sometimes in groups, building floating nests in emergent vegetation.
A species found in northern forests and wetlands in prairie parklands, the red-necked grebe often uses the same habitat as common loons. This grebe prefers shallow water habitat interspersed with bulrushes.
After wintering along the Atlantic coast, the red-necked grebe returns in late April to nest within stands of bulrushes. Each pair makes a nest pile of buoyant, saturated, and partially decomposed aquatic plants and anchors it to stems of adjacent emergent plants. In good habitat, red-necked Grebes may nest in close proximity to each other.
Four-to-five eggs hatch after 22 to 35 days of incubation by both parents. After hatching, the chicks climb onto the back of the parents. They are distinguished by bold black and white stripes on their head and neck. The parents leave the nest with their young after the last egg hatches. Chicks ride on their parents' backs for most of the first couple weeks after hatching. This helps protect them from predators like fish and snapping turtles and keeps them from getting too chilled in the water.
Red-necked grebes need clear water so that they can spot their prey underwater, and they need natural shorelines with emergent and submergent native plants so they can guild their nests and anchor them to those plants.
Unfortunately, red-necked grebes have declined dramatically in Minnesota over the past 50 years. As people have settled on lakeshore lots and built homes, they have routinely pulled out all of the native aquatic plants in front of their cabins because of the perception that such plants were "weeds". Actually, those plants provide habitat for fish and wildlife and stabilize the shoreline by preventing erosion.
People who observe red-necked grebes are asked to contact Pam Perry at (218) 833-8728 or pam.perry@dnr.state.mn.us.
