Figure 31. Four decades after a family group of Least Grebes was found on the lower Colorado River, this first-year bird was present from 19 November to 24 December 1988 at the now-defunct Imperial Warm Water Fish Hatchery near Wister, Imperial County. This photograph was taken there on 21 November 1988 (1988-234; Arnold Small).

 

 

LEAST GREBE Tachybaptus dominicus (Linnaeus, 1766)

Accepted: 10 (71%)	Treated in Appendix H: no
Not accepted: 4	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 9	Color image: none

This tiny grebe is resident from the Bahamas, southern Texas, southern Sonora, and Baja California Sur south through much of South America. The species is a casual vagrant to southern Arizona and has occurred west to Quitobaquito in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (Rosenberg and Witzeman 1998). Records extend north to southeastern Oklahoma (NAB 59:103, 104) and east to Florida.

Remarkably, the first California record of the Least Grebe involves breeding: up to nine birds were at West Pond, near Imperial Dam, 18–23 October 1946 (McMurry and Monson 1947), including a pair of adults on 18 October and five adults with four downy young on 23 October (contra Cogswell 1977, Rosenberg et al. 1991). An adult male and a chick (USNM 393392, 393393) were collected on this last date. This anomalous occurrence stood as the state’s only record for more than 42 years. Numerous claimed extralimital records of this species, some published, pertain to Eared or Pied-billed Grebes.