Podilymbus podiceps
Order Podicipediformes
Family Podicipedidae
Adult in summer.— Middle of throat black; sides of head gray; top of head, back, wings, and tail dark grayish-brown; neck and breast brownish; belly whitish; bill whitish, crossed in the middle by a black band.
♂ Adult male in fall.— Upper parts sooty-brownish; throat whitish; fore neck, breast, and sides brown; rest of under parts silvery-whitish; wing often shows a little white when spread.
♀ Adult female and Immature in fall.— Similar, but paler.
Nest, a mass of stalks, sometimes floating, and attached to surrounding reeds.
Eggs, dull-white, generally stained.
The Pied-billed Grebe, Dabchick, or Hell-diver, is a local summer resident of New York and New England. It breeds in quiet lagoons in ponds or lakes, where reedy shores or a growth of water-loving bushes give it shelter. Such conditions are commonest in Maine, but it breeds also in a few ponds in southern New Hampshire and in Berkshire County, Mass., and undoubtedly in Vermont and northern Connecticut. In the Hudson Valley and in the vicinity of New York it is rare in summer. Throughout New York and New England it is a regular spring and autumn migrant in April, and in September and October. It may then occur on any bit of inland water, particularly where there are sheltered bays, and in the brackish lagoons along the sea-coast. It is rarely seen in the sea itself.
The ease with which the Pied-billed Grebe dives is notorious; sometimes it turns a clean pair of “heels,” sometimes it sinks gently down till only its bill is exposed. Its notes are extremely loud and striking; the commonest is a loud cuck-cuck-cuck-cuck, kow, kow, kow, that suggests the notes of a cuckoo. A rarer note is a loud wah’hoo, wah’-hoo, wah’-hoo, suggesting, in the quality of the tone, the call of the Loon. It has also an alarm-note, a low toot, toot, toot.
The brownish fore neck and upper breast will distinguish this grebe in autumn from the following species, which has pure white under parts. In spring and summer, adults have a small black patch in the middle of the throat; the black band across the middle of the whitish bill shows only at close range.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)