{"id":165283,"date":"2024-11-10T06:00:23","date_gmt":"2024-11-10T13:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=165283"},"modified":"2024-11-10T07:20:19","modified_gmt":"2024-11-10T14:20:19","slug":"the-pied-billed-grebe-and-the-flying-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/10\/the-pied-billed-grebe-and-the-flying-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pied-billed Grebe And The Flying Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

This will make two posts in a row about Pied-billed Grebes. Normally I try to avoid posting photos of the same species in back-to-back posts but these photos were taken at a different pond on a different day and I liked one photo in this series in particular, so I decided to run with it.<\/p>\n

Readers already know that four days ago I felt encouraged by being able to walk some distance to a pond, and shoot from my tripod for a while, without aggravating my bad back. So two days ago I walked 3-4 times as far around a different pond and stood in front of my tripod for nearly an hour. Typical of me, I pushed it a little too far and a little too fast so I was hurting for the rest of the day.<\/p>\n

But I recovered more quickly than usual and I got a few shots that I found interesting. The second photo below is one of them.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

When this Pied-billed Grebe caught a fish ‘he’ wasn’t as close as I prefer but he was turned at a pretty good angle to the partial side light so I took a lot of shots of him. By the time these photos were taken the fish was already dead but the grebe continued to manipulate the fish in his bill for quite a while.<\/p>\n

I think he was just playing with it, perhaps as a form of practice in handling such slippery prey.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Suddenly the fish went flying.<\/p>\n

When these grebes have crayfish or frog prey it isn’t unusual for me to see body parts flying through the air as the grebes are dismembering prey<\/a><\/span><\/span> prior to swallowing. But it’s rare for me to document a fish flying through the air, since they typically swallow fish prey whole.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The next shot in the burst. I didn’t get any more photos of the fish in the air or hitting the water so I must have taken my finger off of the shutter button.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Then he started looking for the fish beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

It didn’t take him long to find and retrieve it. Naturally, he turned his back on me to swallow the fish.<\/p>\n

I quite like that second shot. Both bird and fish are sharp with good light on them and I think the behavior is interesting. And my timing couldn’t have been better.<\/p>\n

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By the way. On that morning I tried a new strategy for trying to reduce my camera gear load while walking to, from and around the pond. Well, it may not be new but it’s been 13-14 years since I’ve used it.<\/p>\n

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I resurrected a golf cart that I converted to a gear carrier many years ago and haven’t used since. It worked really well. It will also carry my tripod but on this morning I just carried my tripod in my hand. The tripod is big and sturdy but it’s constructed of carbon fiber so it’s light and really no trouble to carry.<\/p>\n

It’s that damn lens that bites me in the butt. Literally.<\/p>\n

So even though I pushed it a little too far on that morning, I’m still encouraged. I’ll just cut down on how far I walk and how long I stand in front of my tripod and continue to visit some of the ponds that have been off limits to me for years.<\/p>\n

At least that’s my plan. We’ll see how it goes.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Resurrecting bird photography equipment I haven’t used in years. (6 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165286,"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":[6,334,359],"tags":[6125,7686,251,993,7685,311],"class_list":["post-165283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-pied-billed-grebes","tag-fish-prey","tag-grebe-throwing-a-fish-in-the-air","tag-pied-billed-grebe","tag-podilymbus-podiceps","tag-using-a-golf-cart-to-carry-camera-gear","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/pied-billed-grebe-2564-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-GZR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165283","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=165283"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165313,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165283\/revisions\/165313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}