{"id":21435,"date":"2014-01-15T06:48:23","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T13:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=21435"},"modified":"2014-01-15T06:48:23","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T13:48:23","slug":"pied-billed-grebes-frantically-protecting-their-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/15\/pied-billed-grebes-frantically-protecting-their-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"Pied-billed Grebes Frantically Protecting Their Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning the normally placid\u00a0Farmington Bay Pied-billed Grebes were in a feeding frenzy and I had a wonderful time photographing the action.<\/p>\n

Note: I’m rushed for time this morning so there will be no shooting techs posted and the images were all processed globally and quickly.\u00a0 These photos involve several different birds and fish and are presented in the order they were taken.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

The theme of the morning was “protect your meal”.\u00a0 When a grebe caught a fish, pandemonium would break out as other birds tried to steal it (or the rightful owner though they might – these grebes are notorious kleptoparasites).\u00a0 So the grebe with the fish would rush across the water to find a safe place to down the meal.<\/p>\n

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

When it was safely away it would slow down…<\/p>\n

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

and then attempt to kill and eat the fish.\u00a0 This involves pinching it with their stout beak and shaking the devil out of it.<\/p>\n

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

But in the meantime another bird would often approach so the grebe with the fish would swim frantically away\u00a0to avoid it.<\/p>\n

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

If the potential thief appeared to be serious about thievery intentions the grebe with the fish would skitter across the water at high-speed.\u00a0 I like the angle of the wing secondaries in this image.<\/p>\n

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

This might have been the largest fish I saw taken that morning.\u00a0 I include the image because it gives us a good look at the fish.\u00a0 The grebe apparently had no trouble downing the fish.\u00a0 Very soon after this photo was taken it dove and when it emerged the fish was nowhere to be seen (they often swallow fish underwater to avoid competition).<\/p>\n

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

A rear view with no light in the eye but I like the way the head of the fish is skimming the surface of the water as the grebe rushes away.<\/p>\n

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

At times it was difficult to tell whether the grebe had the fish or the fish had the grebe.<\/p>\n

Once again\u00a0I was struck by\u00a0how many invasive\u00a0Weather Loaches are in this pond.\u00a0 So far this year I’ve seen grebes at the pond catch dozens of fish and all but one of them was a Weather Loach (the other fish was a carp).<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Yesterday morning the normally placid Farmington Bay Pied-billed Grebes were in a feeding frenzy and I had a wonderful time photographing the action.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21440,"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":[334,392,359],"tags":[1701,397,141,185,1626,251,993,1835,320],"class_list":["post-21435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-pied-billed-grebes","tag-exotic-species","tag-farmington-bay","tag-fish","tag-invasive-species","tag-kleptoparasite","tag-pied-billed-grebe","tag-podilymbus-podiceps","tag-preyy","tag-weather-loach"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/pied-billed-grebe-9600-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5zJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21435","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=21435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}