Dancing Grebes and Ventriloquist Owls

Plumas Audubon, in partnership with other Northern California chapters and Audubon California, has been working to conserve grebes and owls.  Clark’s and Western Grebes are colonial water birds that nest on floating mounds of vegetation and have elaborate courtship rituals including a “rushing” display where pairs dance across the water together.  For the last seven years, Plumas Audubon has determined how water level management affects breeding grebes on three reservoirs, which comprise a significant proportion of grebes that breed in California.  Meanwhile, the ventriloquist Flammulated Owl is a secretive, neotropical migrant that eats only insects and nests in tree cavities.  For the last five years, Plumas Audubon has studied migration and the effect of forest management on this owl around Lake Davis, the largest known population in the Sierra Nevada.

Speaker: David Arsenault, Executive Director of Plumas Audubon Society