Finfoots | Heliornithidae

Futenkoeten | Avesoles

A small family of three species, each on a different continent: the African Finfoot (Podica), the Asian Masked Finfoot and the American Sungrebe. In Mexico and Central America only the Sungrebe occurs, from southern Mexico to Panama. Finfoots look like a cross between a grebe and a cormorant, with an elongated body, a long, thin neck and a pointed, straight bill, yet they belong with the cranes and rails. The Sungrebe is the smallest of the three, with a black-and-white striped head. The toes carry broad lobes instead of webs and, like the legs, are boldly banded black and yellow. It is a shy bird of quiet, shaded rivers, streams, lagoons and mangroves with overhanging bank vegetation. It swims low in the water with a nodding head, close along the bank, and when disturbed slips away under the vegetation or flies off low over the water. It eats aquatic insects, crustaceans, frogs and small fish, taken from the surface, from branches or on the bank. The nest is a platform of twigs and reeds on a branch above the water. In the Sungrebe the male carries the young, soon after hatching, in skin pockets beneath the wings.