Hi
A few weeks ago at the Coon Rapids dam I met a woman and we started talking about birding and the topic of western grebes at Lake Osakis came up in our conversation. I had never been there but she had so we agreed to take a trip there primarily to look for Grebes the Grebe I was most interested in was the Western Grebe, a bird that I had never seen before. She saw them last summer with their babies on their backs as well .   I had seen no postings this year of the Western Grebe so I wondered if they were even back yet.  We arrived at a resort on the north west corner of Osakis at 8 a.m. We were going to rent a small boat and motor but they gave us a deal on a pontoon boat so we took that.  My friend knew the lake and expected to see some western grebes from the shore but we didn’t. We did see and photograph a common loon close to shore. Once we got into the pontoon boat we drove slowly along the shore line looking for whatever and hoping for the grebes.  We saw a belted kingfisher soon but no photos. Lots and lots of coots and red heads. ring necks  and a few canvasback as well as a few pelicans were seen in the first hour. We also saw many double crested cormorants and then we saw a pair of Red necked Grebes  We got close to them. I had just seen two at Sherburne a couple of days earlier but no where near a close as these. My friend had never seen one before and we were both excited to get shots of this beautiful bird.  We saw several more pairs of red necks and a horned grebe before sighting our first pair of western grebes.   We were both happy to see this beautiful bird. The distinctive long white neck really stood out on the calm waters of Osakis today.  This was a lifer for me.  We shot many photos and tried putting out bait but they didn’t get that much closer however we did attract a caspian tern (first of the year)who dive bombed into the water close to our boat.  He came back many times.  We then saw several more western Grebes but no large group as we hoped for and we didn’t see them do their dancing on the water act but they did do some courting.  We also saw many more pelicans, cormorants,  at least a dozen loon, a pair of common mergansers and a pair of red breasted mergansers, a bonaparte’s gull, another belted kingfisher,  We were out four and a half hours and it flew by like a few minutes. At one point the lake appeared to have many thousands of birds in it.   A great example of what to do on earth day.  Below is a link to some photos.  
Ron Taube
Coon Rapids. 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ronsthoughts/with/25981658493/ <https://www.flickr.com/photos/ronsthoughts/with/25981658493/>