Western Grebe, Cabarrus County, NC, January 1, 2022

My NC Needs Alert on 12/27 featured multiple reports of a Western Grebe on Lake Norman north of Charlotte, NC.  Then likely the same bird was re-located the next day on Coddle Creek Reservoir in Cabarrus County some 6 or 7 miles to the east.  That’s one I need for my NC list, and within my typical chase distance.  Now I just needed the bird to stick around till January 1 – the first day I was available.  That would be a great way to ring in the new birding year.   

My experience with wintering Western Grebes in the northeast is that they will often stay in protected lakes and bays for quite a while.  And luckily that was the case with this bird as it continued to be reported daily.  The good news was that it was often seen in the same part of the reservoir.  The bad news was that it was almost always quite distant – perhaps a mile or more away.  My birding friend Bill Hooker went to see it on the 30th, and he shared his notes with me including the best viewing spot (which interestingly was only mentioned in 1 eBird post).  Plus he offered to meet me there on the 1st which would be most helpful.  The trip was set!

I pulled in at 1 PM and Bill and Anita were already there.  They had scoped the area the Grebe preferred but hadn’t found it yet.  That was mostly because that part of the reservoir was full of birds, most notably perhaps 3,500 Ring-billed Gulls.  There were also 50 ducks on the far shore that were just too far away to identify.  This was going to be difficult. 

I scanned the area multiple times but just kept finding the same birds.  It had been nearly an hour without success when the entire flock of gulls took off, perhaps spooked by an Eagle.  With the gulls temporarily off the water, I hoped that my target bird would be much easier to find - that is if it wasn’t spooked as well.  And sure enough on my first scan through the area I picked out the Western Grebe close to the far shore.  We watched it slowly swim along before it mixed with the distant ducks and disappeared behind a nearby point.

Here is an unmagnified picture of the area where we saw the grebe, perhaps 1.2 miles away. 

And a relative “close-up” of the duck flock it mixed with for a while.

Western Grebe was #312 for my NC state list.  My statebird map for this species is inserted below – in its regular range the blue states are those where I’ve seen this species and the cross-hatched states are those where I still need it. And given that Western Grebe is prone to vagrancy, it’s not surprising that NC was the 8th state where I’ve seen Western Grebe as a rarity (the tan states). 

As an aside – This was not the first time I’ve seen a Western Grebe a mile or more away.  In April 2016 I was able to re-find a Western Grebe on a coastal bay in Brunswick, ME where the bird was roughly 6,500 ft away.  (see my blog post - State Birding: Western Grebe, Brunswick, ME, April 2016 ).One local birder said the bird was “wicked faahh out”.  Needless to say birders’ viewing the NC bird had quite a different accent.

What a great way to start 2022!