All species › Grebes › Grebes › Colombian Grebe
Colombian Grebe | Podiceps andinus
Andesfuut | Zampullín colombiano | Mergulhão-colombiano
The Colombian Grebe was a grebe of the Bogotá plateau and Lake Tota in the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia. It was described only in 1959 and disappeared in the following decades. It is sometimes treated as a subspecies of the Eared Grebe and is now extinct.
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Voice
The voice is hardly described; presumably whistled calls like those of the Eared Grebe.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
About 33 cm, built like an Eared Grebe, with a steep forehead and a thin bill. In breeding plumage blackish on the head and back, with golden-yellow ear plumes behind the red eye and a chestnut lower neck and foreneck. Outside the breeding season grey and white. The sexes were alike.
Confusion species
Eared Grebe Podiceps nigricollis has a black neck in breeding plumage and fuller ear plumes. Silvery Grebe Podiceps occipitalis is paler grey, with a white foreneck. Pied-billed Grebe Podilymbus podiceps is browner and has a thick, short bill.
Habitat
Freshwater lakes and marshes with reed fringes and submerged aquatic plants at about 2500–3100 m. It dived for insects and other invertebrates. It presumably bred on floating nests among the marginal vegetation.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Known only from Colombia: the marshes and lakes of the Bogotá and Ubaté plateau and Lake Tota in Boyacá. Never recorded in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia or the Galápagos.
How and when to look
No birds remain to be seen. Specimens are kept in museums; Lake Tota is still a site for other Andean waterbirds.
Conservation status
Extinct. It declined through drainage of marshes, pollution, the introduction of rainbow trout and reed harvesting; the last reliable record dates from 1977, and later searches were unsuccessful.
Scientific name
Podiceps andinus | (Meyer de Schauensee, 1959)
Meyer de Schauensee described the species in 1959 as Colymbus caspicus andinus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Podiceps was introduced in 1787 by Latham. The genus name comes from Latin podex (genitive podicis), 'rump, vent', and pes, 'foot', for the legs set far back on the body. The species name comes from Latin andinus, 'Andean', and refers to the Andes. The specimen the first description was based on came from Laguna de Tota, Boyacá, Colombia.