{"id":15031,"date":"2013-05-06T05:50:39","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T11:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=15031"},"modified":"2013-05-06T05:50:39","modified_gmt":"2013-05-06T11:50:39","slug":"a-couple-of-interesting-pied-billed-grebe-behaviors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/06\/a-couple-of-interesting-pied-billed-grebe-behaviors\/","title":{"rendered":"A Couple Of Interesting Pied-billed Grebe Behaviors"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lot of folks don’t pay much attention to Pied-billed Grebes – they’re “common”, their plain brown colors don’t create much excitement and their secretive tendencies often make them difficult to approach.\u00a0 But I love watching and photographing these small grebes because their pugnacious behaviors produce some fascinating interactions.\u00a0 They just may be the most aggressive bird species I’ve ever photographed.<\/p>\n

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\"pied<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Larger species, gulls and mergansers especially, regularly\u00a0attempt to steal their prey (kleptoparasitism) as do other\u00a0Pied-billed Grebes.\u00a0 In fact, this species will attempt to snatch prey away from their own mates or parents.\u00a0 As a result they’re extremely nervous with prey in the beak (often a fish) before\u00a0they can swallow it.\u00a0 When pursued they sometimes dive with the fish in order to evade the potential thief but usually they “run” along the surface of the water.<\/p>\n

This evasive behavior is very difficult to photograph because it’s extremely fast and you never know when it’s going to happen or what direction they will run.\u00a0 But this time I was able to keep the bird in the frame and in focus as another grebe chased this one in an attempt to steal the fish.\u00a0 Some of the\u00a0highlights on the side of the fish are blown\u00a0but I still liked the action.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"pied<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000, f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This is a posture I’ve seen multiple times in Pied-billed Grebes but I’m unsure of its meaning.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Based on the context of what’s going on in the vicinity with other grebes I suspect it\u00a0to be an aggressive display – perhaps an attempt to make itself look bigger than it really is but that’s only a guess and I’ve been unable to find a definitive answer through research.\u00a0 \u00a0This is not wing-flapping, the wings are held in this position for several seconds.<\/p>\n

I think it makes for an interesting photo, especially with the reflection included.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I love watching and photographing these small grebes because their pugnacious behaviors produce some fascinating interactions. They just may be the most aggressive bird species I’ve ever photographed.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[334,359],"tags":[1429,1431,680,140,1430,251,993],"class_list":["post-15031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-pied-billed-grebes","tag-agression","tag-blown-highlights","tag-display","tag-fighting","tag-kleptoparasitism","tag-pied-billed-grebe","tag-podilymbus-podiceps"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3Ur","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15031","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=15031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}