Where to find a Clark's Grebe in MTY: This large grebe can be
reasonably common and widespread in migration and winter, and some will
remain through the summer. When nesting, hundreds of pairs can be seen
around the north end of Lake San Antonio. Favored winter locales are:
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Elkhorn Slough and Elkhorn Slough Estuarine Research Reserve, and Moss
Landing Harbor
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Monterey harbor, sometimes in the harbor but more often just offshore the
Coast Guard pier or off the tip of the Commercial Wharf (Wharf #2, the
one you can drive on and park in the metered slots).
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Just offshore the sandy beaches from Ft. Ord south to Del Monte Beach,
Seaside; scope from the "Cross" just south of Monterey Beach Hotel or from
the roads that dead-end at the ocean north of the hotel
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Sheltered covers like that between Lovers Pt. and Otter Pt. in Pacific
Grove, or Stillwater Cover in Pebble Beach
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Just off the beach at the Big Sur R. mouth or the Pajaro R. mouth
Fair numbers are found on the local Christmas Bird Counts (CBC), almost
always in much larger flocks of Western Grebes. While the nesting colonies
on Lake San Antonio seem to have about equal numbers, wintering flocks
are almost always weighted heavily to Western Grebes. The recent average*
for the Monterey Peninsula CBC is 11 Clark's Grebes, and on the Moss Landing
CBC it is 117 grebes (but some of those are in adjacent Santa Cruz County).
There have been years when runs of small fish concentrate larger numbers
just offshore; some 787 Clark's were reported on the Moss Landing CBC on
1 Jan 2001, at the same time when over 12,000 Westerns were totaled. |
As
noted, separating Western and Clark's Grebes is not always easy. They usually
occur together in the same flocks, and Clark's is generally identified
by its orange-yellow bill, but the fact that the eye is in the white part
of the face, by paler flanks, and by a narrower black stripe connecting
the crown with the back. These differences are easily seen on the birds
shown at left. There is still much to be worked out between the two sibling
species when in an ambiguous plumage. For more information see Ratti (1979),
Nuechterlein (1981), Storer & Nuechterlein (1992), and Eckert (1995).
