{"id":17759,"date":"2013-08-24T06:21:27","date_gmt":"2013-08-24T12:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=17759"},"modified":"2013-08-24T06:26:20","modified_gmt":"2013-08-24T12:26:20","slug":"western-grebe-dumping-the-chick-load","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/24\/western-grebe-dumping-the-chick-load\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Grebe – Dumping The Chick Load"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this age Western Grebe chicks are heavy-bodied, small headed, loud, awkward\u00a0and demanding.\u00a0 They alternately ride on the back of each parent (back brooding) as the other adult rests or\u00a0hunts for fish to feed to its family.\u00a0 At this stage the youngsters are good swimmers and\u00a0there’s often not enough room on the parents back\u00a0for all of the chicks to ride comfortably\u00a0anyway so the parent uses an interesting strategy to “dump its load” into the water when it needs a break.\u00a0 The adult raises almost vertically in the water, often doing a simultaneous and controlled wing flap, which forces the chicks\u00a0 to slide off the back and into the water.<\/p>\n

But the desires of parent and youngsters are often at odds in this regard\u00a0and the chicks usually\u00a0resist the unceremonious dumping, which is exactly what is happening here at Bear River MBR.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The adult is just settling\u00a0back down into the water after rising vertically\u00a0and the chicks (two of them)\u00a0are desperately fighting a losing battle to remain on board.\u00a0 Notice that the adult continues to hold its wings up which\u00a0reduces the grip of the youngsters on its back as they slide off.\u00a0 The weight of their rotund and heavy bodies is dragging them down into the\u00a0water as they try to hold on by plastering themselves down against the parent.\u00a0\u00a0 A second or so later both chicks were\u00a0in the drink.<\/p>\n

This isn’t a great shot in the\u00a0classic sense but I do think it shows the behavior pretty well.<\/p>\n

This species\u00a0rides low in the water when swimming and the chicks are largely hidden in the plumage of the parents when\u00a0“hitching a ride”\u00a0so it’s usually difficult to appreciate how heavy bodied they are but I think you get a sense of it with both the adult and the chicks in this image.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this age Western Grebe chicks are heavy-bodied, small headed, loud, awkward and demanding. They alternately ride on the back of each parent (back brooding) as the other adult rests or hunts for fish to feed to its family. At this stage the youngsters are good swimmers and there’s often not enough room on the parents back for all of the chicks to ride comfortably anyway so the parent uses an interesting strategy to “dump its load” into the water when it needs a break. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17760,"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":[338,334,366],"tags":[731,738,49,740,322],"class_list":["post-17759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-western-grebes","tag-aechmophorus-occidentalis","tag-back-brooding","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-chicks","tag-western-grebe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/western-grebe-6532-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4Cr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17759","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=17759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}