{"id":103897,"date":"2021-11-09T05:25:15","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T12:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=103897"},"modified":"2021-11-09T06:04:30","modified_gmt":"2021-11-09T13:04:30","slug":"an-entire-large-family-of-western-grebes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/09\/an-entire-large-family-of-western-grebes\/","title":{"rendered":"An Entire (large) Family Of Western Grebes"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is one of the very few times I’ve ever been able to get three or more Western Grebe chicks and both of their parents in the same photo and get them all sharp. The whole fam damily.<\/p>\n

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1\/500, f\/18, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s an older photo taken on August 23, 2015 at Bear River MBR. There’s actually a fourth chick directly behind the neck of the smaller adult female at left but that youngster is mostly hidden in her feathers and by her neck. This is a large family for the species. Western Grebes only rarely have more than four chicks and in my experience they usually have only two or three.<\/p>\n

Since it was so unusual for me to get a family portrait like this I didn’t want to blow the opportunity by not having enough depth of field to get them all sharp. I was pretty close to these birds so getting enough DOF was a challenge so I took the time to play around with my aperture settings. This shot was taken at f\/18 which is highly unusual for me. My strategy worked (they’re all sharp) but I missed some potentially very good photos while I was fiddling around with my camera settings. Bird photography is often a matter of tradeoffs.<\/p>\n

I haven’t posted this shot before for three reasons – the phragmites reflections in the water are busy, there’s no catch light in the eye of the two rear chicks and I just barely clipped the cute little butt of the trailing chick in the water.<\/p>\n

But last night I decided I was being just a little too picky about those three nits, especially for a\u00a0 shot like this one, so I’m going for the gusto and posting it anyway. As Judy suggested in her comment below maybe I’m mellowing a little…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is one of the very few times I’ve ever been able to get three Western Grebe chicks and both of their parents in the same photo and get them all sharp. The whole fam damily.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[338,6,334,366],"tags":[731,6004,49,740,6003,6005,2625,322],"class_list":["post-103897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-western-grebes","tag-aechmophorus-occidentalis","tag-aperture-settings-for-sufficient-depth-of-field","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-chicks","tag-family-portrait","tag-how-many-chicks-do-western-grebes-have","tag-reflections","tag-western-grebe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/western-grebe-1549-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-r1L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103897"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103930,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103897\/revisions\/103930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}