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Baby grebes set record

Annual count: Naturalists surprised to find so many.
Grebes dancing
Natural spectacle: Grebes carry out their mating dance. This year Shuswap Lake is supporting more babies than ever.

The number of young Western Grebes in Salmon Arm is greater than its ever been.

Ed and Monica Dahl did their weekly count on July 25, only to find 191 young grebes and 212 adults. They counted about 114 families, although Ed said it’s hard to tell because the families don’t always stay close together at this time.

The number of young grebes is higher than recorders have counted for any year since keeping track of the Salmon Arm population. Adult population numbers, however, are not out of the ordinary.

The Dahls are with the Shuswap Naturalists and the Salmon Arm Bay Nature Enhancement Society. A little over a month ago they found no young grebes and were surprised when they counted 16 on June 30.  Ed called it quite a revelation that so many appeared so quickly.

At that time the couple only expected to see 50 or 60 young ones turn up, so finding 191 was another surprise.

“Many of the parent birds still had young riding on their backs, and some of the young were obviously hatched  a few weeks ago as they are now about half the size of the parents,” he said.

The count was done on a calm morning with good visibility and few boaters around.

Ed said the nesting areas weren’t obvious, possibly because the reed canary grass seemed to rearrange during high water in 2012.

“This year even the red-winged blackbirds seemed to have difficulty finding last year’s dead cattails to support the early nesting, which usually supplies habitat for the first batch of young,” he said.