The Eared Grebe (Podiceps nigricollis) is by far the most abundant species of grebe in the world and in North America (Cullen et al. 1999) as well, with an estimated population exceeding four million. It is a familiar species in much of the West, although rare in eastern North America. Before continuing, I urge you to read the entire account in Birds of North America (BNA; now Birds of the World) by Cullen et al. (1999). It is absolutely jam-packed with information, much of it fascinating and remarkable. Most of the following comes from this publication

The introduction alone well summarizes what for me were the most interesting factoids, particularly the ones dealing with the physiological changes the species goes through during molting periods. The authors point out that “while at fall molting/staging lakes, adults more than double their arrival mass, while the pectoral muscles atrophy below a size that allows flight. Then, during a hyperphagic period, they greatly increase the size of their organs used in digestion and food storage. These changes in size and proportions—the most extreme yet for any known bird—are then reversed during a brief predeparture period, when the birds catabolize much of their just-deposited fat, increase heart size, reduce digestive organ mass to perhaps 25% of peak in preparation for a nonstop flight to wintering areas.” The physiological changes don’t stop here, but you get the drift. Read the account for so much more.

Eared Grebes breed in much of the interior West, and Cullen et al. (1999) say they prefer shallow alkaline lakes and ponds where they feed on small invertebrates. The breeding range varies from year to year depending on water levels and suitable habitat. The birds are highly gregarious at all times of the year. The two important locations for staging and molting are Mono Lake and the Great Salt Lake. Their migration in fall is late and often in mass, and this can cause mass mortality if they encounter winter storms or fog, when they can be attracted to lights when disoriented (see Jehl and Bond 1983, and other references cited in Cullen et al. 1999 under Causes of Mortality for Adults). Collision with objects or simple grounding is often fatal. The authors cited above state that a running start is necessary for them to fly. One presumes this requires open water. The authors go on to say that these sudden events resulting in mass mortalities have involved as many as 35,000 birds in southern Utah (Jehl 1993, Jehl 1996, Jehl et al. 1999). The species winters primarily in the central and northern Gulf of California and at the Salton Sea. Large die-offs have occurred in major El Niño years (Jehl and Bond 1983 and other citations in Cullen et al. 1999). Far larger starvation-induced die-offs occurred at Mono Lake in 2014 and 2015 (Joe Jehl in litt.). A die-off of 150,000 at the Salton Sea in 1991 remains undiagnosed (Jehl 1996). Migrant Eared Grebes are sometimes seen well out to sea (especially in fall) on pelagic trips.

The Eared Grebe is a polytypic species with three recognized subspecies. By far the most abundant subspecies is New World Podiceps nigricollis californicus, numbering over four million. The very similar-appearing nominate nigricollis is found in the Old World, where it has the English name of Black-necked Grebe. It is far less numerous, perhaps numbering a half million. Most are found in Central Asia, where they breed east to western Siberia in the Ob Valley. Another population, separated by roughly 2,000 miles, is found in northeast Asia, and smaller numbers are found in Western Europe, including the United Kingdom. Most winter in the Black and Caspian Seas, on the Persian Gulf, and on Turkish lakes. Some winter east to Japan (uncommon). Another subspecies, gurneyi, numbering in the tens of thousands, is found primarily in southern Africa. It is the smallest subspecies and is grayer above and shows minor differences in alternate plumage. Another species of grebe, the Colombian Grebe (P. andinus), with a rufous neck, was formerly treated as a subspecies of Eared Grebe. It was found on temperate lakes in Colombia but went extinct by the early 1970s. The Eared Grebe subspecies nigricollis and californicus are very similar in appearance; the primary difference is that in the latter the white on the wing is almost completely restricted to the secondaries, while in the former it extends out prominently to include the inner four primaries. But since Eared Grebes are rarely seen in flight (they migrate at night), seeing the spread wing is infrequent. Nominate nigricollis, on average, has a shorter bill (males of both subspecies have longer bills than females).

Despite the very similar appearance of californicus and nigricollis, there is more to this story. Several decades ago, I was in a marquee tent at the British Bird Fair at Rutland Water. I passed a booth where a computer screen had an alternate plumaged Eared (Black-necked) Grebe. It was calling and sounded nothing like the Eared Grebe calls I knew from the western US. I noticed that this booth was advertising tours to the Balkans, maybe to Bulgaria, maybe to the Danube Delta (in Romania). I watched the image for a while and listened to the unfamiliar calls. I was simply puzzled. At least a decade later, when vocalizations were online (e.g., Xeno-canto), I looked up and played the calls of nigricollis. New World birds give a distinctive Advertising Call, the familiar up-slurred mellow whistle described in the BNA account. The Old World birds give a much harsher Advertising Call. The differences were consistent in reviewing multiple recordings from different European countries. In searching further, I found that even in volume one of The Birds of the Western Palearctic (Cramp 1977) the vocalizations described were based primarily on New World accounts, the information having been provided by R. W. Storer, an authority on grebes. The Advertising Call is given as a “Poo(-)eee-chk).” The call is described as flutelike and slurred, the last note heard only at close range. Clearly, New World californicus was much better known. I have yet to find any published commentary on the differences between the Advertising Calls of New and Old World birds. Somehow it has been neglected.

When I brought up this issue with J. V. (Van) Remsen, he indicated the importance of vocalizations in the pair formation of grebes, and this is emphasized strongly in the BNA account on Eared Grebe by Cullen et al. (1999). If the Advertising Calls are so different, it is hard to imagine that during the “meet and greet” period calls that were substantially different would lead to pair formation, display, and mating. Keep in mind the substantial distance between the ranges of the two subspecies. For fun I looked up the distances near the edges of the breeding ranges of the two subspecies. From Fargo (North Dakota) to Madrid (Spain), the distance is 4,389 miles, and from Vladivostok (Russian Far East) to Yakima (Washington), the distance is 4,820 miles. I’m not sure if Black-necked Grebe has been recorded in Iceland, but the two specimens from Greenland are from West Greenland and are of New World californicus (Boertmann 1994). Hawaii has four records, including one specimen (records detailed and discussed by Pyle and Pyle 2017). Three are from the Southeastern Islands, but one is a thousand miles to the west on Laysan Island (November 11–26, 1998), roughly equidistant between Japan and the west coast of North America. The subspecies of this bird is unknown, but two of the other records are of californicus.  

I’m not even going to speculate how long ago in the past the two populations were in contact with one another. I have no idea if there have been any genetic studies done between the two taxa, but if the Advertising Calls are that different, I would suggest a prima facie case can be made for a species split on that basis alone. It should also be mentioned that one of the reasons that Clark’s and Western Grebes were split in the early 1980s was the different vocalizations and the response, or lack thereof, in reciprocal playback experiments. Despite the phenotypical and vocalization differences between those now recognized species, they rather frequently hybridize, an underappreciated issue by birders. Who, after all, identifies hybrids between these two species? What are we calling the hybrids? My informed guess is that we assign them to one or the other species.

Next steps for the Eared Grebes would be reciprocal playback experiments with the established protocols between californicus and nigricollis with the Advertising Calls as well as the other vocalizations detailed in the BNA account (which are of californicus). Other aspects should be studied too. Lars Svenson in his third edition of the Princeton Field Guide to the Birds of Europe (2023), in my opinion the best field guide yet written, describes the territorial call as the easiest call to recognize, a rising somewhat strained repeated “pὕ–iii(ch).” This is remarkably similar to what is described in the BNA account (Cullen et al. 1999) for californicus, except for the “somewhat strained” part. Future studies of Old World Black-necked Grebes might be done in Central Asia where they are most abundant, but some breed in Western Europe too, including the United Kingdom, which would be easier to do logistically, though involving fewer birds (average UK breeders number 54 pairs in recent years). In the meantime, I encourage you to listen to the two subspecies calls on Xeno-canto and perhaps come up with better words to describe the Advertising Call of nigricollis.

As I considered these issues recently, I also thought about my previous field experience with Old World nigricollis. Despite multiple trips to Europe and the Middle East, I only recall seeing one Black-necked Grebe, and that was under bizarre circumstances. A group of 24 of us were attending an International Bird Identification meeting at Eilat, Israel (at head of the Red Sea), in early November 1986. Early on we got together for a group photo in the desert just north of the town. As we were posing for the photo, a waterbird flew by, an apparent grebe, and seemingly landed on the ground behind some acacia trees. A few of the group went over and promptly flushed it, and it flew by us again. It was a Black-necked Grebe. I recently asked Joe Morlan, a participant there, about this. I wondered if my memory was faulty, as it took off from the ground and the BNA account says that birds grounded can’t take flight again. I wondered if it was caught and examined by the group. Joe vaguely remembered the incident, but he also said that had it been caught the group would have examined every feather for an hour. That’s another story from the conference to be related at another time. Suffice it to say, the Old World Black-necked Grebe is a much scarcer taxon than our Eared Grebe.

One of the authors of the BNA account is Joseph R. Jehl Jr., certainly one of and probably the world’s authority on the species, at least of californicus. He has some 30 peer-reviewed publications on Eared Grebes. Joe grew up in New Jersey and got his undergraduate degree at Cornell University, a time when the legendary Arthur A. Allen still taught there. He got his doctoral degree at the University of Michigan. His dissertation was on shorebirds under H. B. Tordoff and R. W. Storer. His fieldwork was at Churchill, Manitoba, on Hudson Bay.

Joe’s interest in Churchill continued long after his fieldwork there, totaling four decades. His major emphasis in his studies was on the biology and population dynamics of shorebirds. He coauthored Birds of the Churchill Region, Manitoba (with Blanche A. Smith), in 1970, and authored an updated and expanded, Birdlife of the Churchill Region: Status, History, Biology, in 2004. He was kind enough to send me a signed copy, and I treasure it. It is very difficult to obtain now, as it out of print.

What makes this book especially valuable for me are his insightful, short to medium-length essays sprinkled throughout the text, numbering 28, authored about evenly by Joe and others. All should be read, but two are particularly memorable. On pages 130–131, James W. Briskie wrote an essay on the mating system of Smith’s Longspurs (“Smith Longspurs Make Love Not War”) detailing the mating system of polygynandry, where males and females mate frequently and with multiple mates. At the end of Briskie’s essay, Joe adds his own comments detailing the additional studies that are needed. A story never ends, and diving into portals opens up many more to explore. On page 137, in a short essay, “The Kinds of Redpolls,” Joe recommends a commonsense approach for determining if they are separate species. Both breed together in varying (particularly for Hoary) numbers. They were recently lumped by the AOS Checklist Committee (NACC) based entirely on genetic studies, with no detailed studies on the breeding grounds where they are sympatric in a narrow latitudinal belt over much of the Holarctic. As the issue was discussed in comments by the NACC, Joe’s essay was quoted on repeated occasions, ultimately to no avail. It is my hope that his book is reprinted, perhaps by WFO, although Manitoba is outside our area of purview. He was the curator of birds and mammals at the San Diego Natural History Museum (SDNHM) from 1967 to 1977. It was during that time frame I first met him on a pelagic trip off San Diego, on September 14, 1968.

We saw each other intermittently in the 1970s. I remember bringing a dead beached Horned Puffin to the SDNHM in the 1970s (perhaps 1975). The staff at the entrance wouldn’t let me see him (maybe he was away?), and I later learned that the specimen was given to a janitor, who threw it in the dumpster because it smelled! Joe was not pleased and let the staff know. On October 16, 1976, at Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley National Park, we met again. Later that day we drove north to Scotty’s Castle together. Just before reaching the castle, a Brown Thrasher flew across the road. Joe jumped out of the car with his camera to document it and returned saying, and I’m paraphrasing, “Why did it have to be a Brown Thrasher? I would have preferred a Le Conte’s, a Bendire’s, any thrasher but a Brown!” Joe grew up in the East, where Brown Thrasher is common. The comment was not unusual for Joe, but I suspected he was still excited by the find, but couldn’t let on to that. A few days earlier, late on the afternoon of October 13, Joe had found an immature female Pine Warbler around the administration building of Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery on Point Loma, San Diego. I saw it the next morning and later so did dozens of others. Back then, there were only three previous records for California. Several weeks later, I picked him up at the SDNHM, and we drove down to Tijuana River Valley, near Imperial Beach, California, where we had good views of a McCown’s (now Thick-billed) Longspur.

In 1977 Joe left the SDNHM and soon afterward became the assistant director at Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute, where he continued his research. He said he could have seen the wintering Yellow-billed Loon on Mission Bay (December 2022–March 2023) from his office window, except he had left California more than two decades earlier. Joe first visited Mono Lake in 1980 and then launched into his Eared Grebe studies. Mono Lake and the Great Salt Lake are the two main staging areas for californicus Eared Grebes, and numbers can build into the many hundreds of thousands in fall. He left California in 2000 for Maryland (Annapolis), where he became a research associate in the Division of Birds at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, a position he has held to the present.

Joe had a very important connection to WFO at the beginning. Alan M. Craig brought this to my attention a little more than a half decade ago. Alan was the first editor (1970–1986) of California Birds and Western Birds (as the journal was called after 1972), and he asked Joe to help him in the editorial work for the journal. We honored Joe at the 43^rd Annual WFO Conference in Ventura, California, held in the fall of 2018, with an Outstanding Service Award. Joe wrote a kind and moving letter to the organization, which his son, Dan, read (with meaning) at the conference when accepting Joe’s award. Dan is an excellent birder in his own right and is also an accomplished herper. (One source defines this “as one who searches for and observes reptiles and amphibians.” The word comes from the Greek herpeton, which means “creeping animal.”) The two of us started corresponding intermittingly at that point. He sent me his recent Churchill book, and he talked about coming up to the east side of the Sierra and boating together on Mono Lake in the fall. He praised Western Birds, saying that it filled the niche of what the Condor, the journal of the Cooper Ornithological Club, used to be. I sent him Birds of Inyo County, California, by Tom and Jo Heindel (published by WFO in the fall of 2023), and he was very impressed by the overwhelming and comprehensive content. He was less enthused than I about the taxonomic significance of the different Advertising Calls between Old and New World Eared Grebes.

Recently Joe contacted me. He was coming here for two days, October 16–17. He was interested in connecting with me and with Debbie House, a recently retired waterbird ecologist at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power here in Bishop. The three of us arranged to bird together for two days. We met at Schat’s Bakery in Mammoth and traveled the short distance to Crowley Reservoir. After wrapping my car around a large rock, we arrived at the delta of the Owens River. Looking out the front passenger window, Joe casually pointed out a longspur, but didn’t know what kind. Debbie and I searched for it on the water’s edge, where there were pipits and larks, and couldn’t find it. We turned to Joe and asked him where it was, and he said, “Well it’s just a few feet in front of me.” Indeed, it was. It was a female Lapland and seemed oblivious to our presence, and was all by itself. I have walked right up to other longspurs that didn’t have companions.

Later we drove north to the mouth of Rush Creek at Mono Lake. There were many birds, including hundreds of gulls and a few hundred waterfowl, mostly Northern Shoveler, but, notably, also three “Aleutian” (leucopareia) Cackling Geese, two Bonaparte’s Gulls, and two juvenile Sabine’s Gulls. My attention was also drawn to a second-cycle gull, which looked like a California Gull but seemed distinctly larger and had a paler mantle than a second-cycle California Gull near it. I wondered if this bird might be of the subspecies albertaensis. I asked Joe his opinion. He was the right person to ask, as he had formerly described the subspecies in 1987. Two of the distinguishing characters are its paler gray mantle and larger size. My sense from his response was that it was perhaps “a bridge too far.” You might have been able to guess that the subspecies he named breeds primarily in Alberta, the northeastern portion of the California Gull’s breeding range. On the other hand, I wondered later if it could have been a second-cycle Herring Gull still with a dark-appearing eye. I never saw the spread wing pattern, which is diagnostic. I did photograph it in the mass of gulls along with a typical darker gray-backed second-cycle California Gull. Leaving some immature gulls unresolved is a policy that all birders should embrace. Perhaps most alarmingly, we saw only a single Eared Grebe on Mono Lake that afternoon. There should have been thousands, if not tens of thousands.

A little more than a month later, on November 17, Debbie and I returned to Mono Lake to look for an Eastern Phoebe, which had been found there. We saw thousands of Eared Grebes as we drove north along the west side of the lake, and from the end of the boardwalk at Mono Lake County Park, there were thousands, seemingly as far as we could see. I suggested 10,000; Debbie said many more. I suggested 50,000, and she said okay, but likely more. And that was just what we could see from the end of the boardwalk. That day at the lake there might have been a half million. How does one count such a number? Somehow the world seemed like a better place at that moment. This fall their arrival in mass had been later than normal.

Joe is still very keen on publishing papers and talked to Debbie extensively about ideas on several subjects of mutual interest. I asked Joe about his early contributions in editing articles for California Birds and, on a more mundane level, went over stories from long ago. We fit in birding and talking, ending with a delicious dinner at Roberto’s in Mammoth. Someone who has known Joe a long time recently told me that Joe is one to make every minute count, so don’t waste time on frivolous pursuits. This thought later came to me as I glanced periodically at the television screen when the Dodgers were playing the Mets in New York in game three of the League Championship Series. I asked Joe about our outing to see Thick-billed Longspur. He didn’t remember it. He didn’t remember finding the fourth state record of Pine Warbler. He still remembered his disappointment on seeing the 1976 Scotty’s Castle Brown Thrasher.

Guy McCaskie told me a story about a polar bear that visited Joe’s cabin at Churchill. Joe went out through the window, and I vaguely recalled Guy saying the bear exited through a wall. I asked Joe if this was true, and he smiled and told us the story. It was his last night of a research trip at Churchill, and he had packed all of his gear in a crate and placed it against the door. Early the next morning, the crate started moving, and Joe discovered the reason: a polar bear was pushing its way in. Joe pushed back and succeeded in keeping the intruder on the outside of his cabin. He commented that the window would have been too small for him to crawl through, and Joe is skinny. We talked about bird issues, and I asked him if he thought that the Wilson’s Phalarope should be transferred from the genus Phalaropus to Steganopus, a pet interest of mine. He was ambivalent. He told me that he was going to eventually persuade me that Thayer’s Gull needed to be restored to species status. We didn’t get into that discussion, but I suspect it will take place somewhere down the road. I asked about his son, Dan, and I indicated that he was an excellent birder. Joe smiled and said he’s “getting dangerous.” I sensed Joe’s feelings were of endearment and respect.

We talked a good deal about Eared Grebes. I asked him if the species migrated at night and he said yes. I later read that in the BNA account, but he added that on Mono Lake during a full moon rise in late fall you might see an exodus of Eared Grebes leaving and heading south from Mono Lake some 40 minutes after sunset. He suggested one walk along the shoreline to the east of Navy Beach at the south end of the lake. The grebes will exit the lake low and in groups. Keep in mind that in late fall it might be well below freezing so bring lots of warm clothes.

Another question I asked was what percent of Eared Grebes were leucistic, and he said about one in a hundred thousand. I urge readers to read Jehl (1985, 2007) and Pyle and McPherson (2017). Joe’s 1985 publication is in the Condor (accessible via SORA, Searchable Ornithological Record Archives); in it he details, with sketches and a photo (with spread wing), six types of variation of leucistic birds. These leucistic birds are mainly nonbreeding second year and adults. Some are nearly pure white (see photo). Based on the three publications, the incidence of leucism may be more frequent. In a limited study on the causeway at Antelope Island State Park, Great Salt Lake, Utah (Pyle and McPherson 2017), the frequency was about one in five hundred.

The next morning the three of us met in Bishop and headed south to Owens Lake. We spent the morning and early afternoon touring the lake with Debbie as our guide. We returned to Bishop by midafternoon. Joe had a meeting to attend later in Reno and then flew home early the next morning. That’s Joe, not a minute to waste!

Turning to WFO, I asked what he did in the editing, and I told him that I had asked Alan Craig the same question. Alan responded, “Anything he was asked.” Joe responded, “That’s Alan, always kind.”

I asked Joe roughly about how many publications he authored or coauthored. He said he didn’t keep track, but over 200. I looked through the pages of California Birds and Western Birds and counted 11 of his papers, so roughly 5 percent were contributed to WFO. Of these, one (Jehl 1975) details the first record of Craveri’s Murrelet for Oregon, the only bird he picked up on a targeted beach walk in coastal Lane County. Another (Jehl 1976) details the northernmost breeding colony of Heermann’s Gull in Baja California Norte. In 1977 (Jehl 1977) he published an annotated list of the Birds of Islas Coronados, Baja California. He gives additional commentary on leucism in Eared Grebes (Jehl 2007). In that paper he also describes and illustrates (with photos) underappreciated field characters separating Horned and Eared Grebes. One carefully details the culmen shape differences (straight on Eared, slightly down-curved on Horned), and another describes how Horned has more bare skin between the eye and the bill, which angles more sharply up than on Eared. In perhaps his most unusual (for Joe) article (Jehl 1980), he asked a group of California birders (Laurence C. Binford, Paul Lehman, Guy McCaskie, Rich Stallcup, and me) to predict the next 10 species to occur in California. Forty-five years have passed, and none of the five has gotten all 10, although three have 9. Swainson’s Warbler was predicted by four of us, but surprisingly it has not yet been recorded from California but has occurred on a handful of occasions in both New Mexico and Colorado and once in northern Arizona. These articles and the others are easily located by using the index on the WFO website.

Getting to know Joe better, I’m struck that he is intensely curious and often skeptical, and is dedicated to research and publishing his findings, a desire that continues to this day. WFO was fortunate to have him contribute his skills at its beginning. In addition to being a coauthor on the BNA account (No. 433, 1999) for Eared Grebe, he was an author on the BNA accounts for Stilt Sandpiper (No. 341), Short-billed Dowitcher (No. 564), and Wilson’s Phalarope (No. 83). He has published many papers on shorebirds and on other species as well. Just ask him about the mating system of Smith’s Longspur! For Eared Grebes I’ve listed some of his published papers below.

I asked Joe what else was there to add about his life of being an ornithologist. He responded: “helping to get and REMOVE [Brown] pelican from the endangered list.”

We talked about much during the day and into the evening and enjoyed a fine day of birding, which concluded, appropriately, when Debbie spotted two Sabine’s Gulls at Joe’s beloved mouth of Rush Creek, Mono Lake. It is, after all, our WFO logo. A storm with some wind and rain was rapidly approaching from the west. As we were getting ready to leave, one of the juvenile Sabine’s flew north by us along the beach. It was a fitting end to the day.

—Jon L. Dunn

ACNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Kimball L. Garrett and Debbie House for reading an earlier draft of the manuscript and Bob Steele for generously providing the outstanding Eared Grebe (californicus) photos. Now we need some Old World nigricollis photos, which will look seemingly identical! Peter Pyle supplied me with his paper on leucism in Eared Grebes. Guy McCaskie, over the decades, has supplied me with many stories of Joe Jehl on our long drives to birding destinations, most of which fit, more or less, Joe’s recollections. Joe has been of great help in cooperating with me on this project. This is not to say that he is in agreement with all parts the article. He did review an earlier draft. Most of all, I thank Joe for his editorial assistance to California (now Western) Field Ornithologists at its beginning. When you have a chance, look at those first three volumes of California Birds (1970–1972), which set the standard to follow in the more than five decades since.

Selected References

Boertmann, D. 1994. A annotated checklist to the birds of Greenland. Bioscience 38:1–63.

Cramp, S. Chief Editor. 1977. Handbook of the Birds of Europe and the Middle East and North Africa, vol. 1 (Ostrich to Ducks). Oxford University Press.

Cullen, S. A., J. R. Jehl Jr., and G. L. Nuechterlein. 1999. Eared Grebe (Podiceps nigricollis). In The Birds of North America, No. 433 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.

Jehl, J. R. Jr. 1975. A Craveri’s Murrelet from Oregon. Western Birds 6:709.

Jehl, J. R. Jr. 1976. The northernmost colony of Heermann’s Gull. Western Birds 7:25–26.

Jehl, J. R. Jr. 1977. An annotated list of the birds of Islas Los Coronados, Baja California, and adjacent waters. Western Birds 8:91–101.

Jehl, J. R. Jr. 1980. Trends in the state list of California Birds. Western Birds 11:103–110.

Jehl, J. R. Jr. 1985. Leucism in Eared Grebes in western North America. Condor 95:470–473.

Jehl, J. R. Jr. 1993. Observations of fall migration of Eared Grebes, based on evidence from a mass downing in Utah. Condor 87:439–441.

Jehl, J. R. Jr. 1996. Mass mortality events of Eared Grebes in North America. Journal of Field Ornithology 67:471–476.

Jehl, J. R. Jr. 2007. Additional notes on leucistic Eared Grebes at Mono Lake. Western Birds 38:289–292.

Jehl, J. R. Jr., and S. I. Bond. 1983. Mortality of Eared Grebes in winter 1982–1983. Am. Birds 37:832–833.

Jehl, J. R. Jr., A. E. Henry, and S. I. Bond. 1999. Running the migratory gauntlet: population, characteristics, flight energetics, sampling bias and migration routes of Eared Grebes downed in the Utah desert. Auk 116:178–183.

Pyle, P., and M. McPherson. 2017. Why so many white Eared Grebes? Birding (October) 49:54–61.

Pyle, R., and P. Pyle. 2017. The Birds of the Hawaiian Islands: Occurrence, History, Distribution, and Status, Version 2. B.P. Bishop Museum.