{"id":23972,"date":"2014-05-19T04:57:17","date_gmt":"2014-05-19T10:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=23972"},"modified":"2014-05-19T04:57:17","modified_gmt":"2014-05-19T10:57:17","slug":"ratchet-pointing-dip-shaking-western-grebes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/19\/ratchet-pointing-dip-shaking-western-grebes\/","title":{"rendered":"Ratchet pointing, Dip-shaking Western Grebes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two behaviors indicative of pair bonds between mated pairs of Western (or Clark’s) Grebes are “Ratchet pointing” and “Dip-shaking”.\u00a0 The behaviors are often\u00a0alternated, one after the other.\u00a0 I photographed both of them\u00a0as they were performed by a pair of Western Grebes\u00a0three days ago\u00a0at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a01600, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

While Ratchet-pointing the birds point their bills toward each other, raise their crests, cause their throats to bulge and produce a harsh, ratchet-like call with their heads held low.\u00a0 Here the two\u00a0grebes are\u00a0in the process of assuming that position.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01250, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0These grebes were eyeball to eyeball (or at least as close as they could get with those long, spearing bills) when the calling began.\u00a0 That ratchet call can be heard here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01000, f\/9, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

During Dip-shaking the bill and front part of the head are dipped into the water, then raised and shaken which sends water flying.\u00a0 Here from the water disturbance in front of the foreground bird you can see where the head and bill had been pulled out of the water and the background grebe is calling loudly as it watches the performance.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01250, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0More Dip-shaking from the same pair of birds.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01000, f\/9, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Here the background grebe is dipping its bill just prior to shaking.<\/p>\n

These two behaviors are alternated in bouts of 3 to 15 times.\u00a0\u00a0 For this presentation the order of images is not\u00a0sequential and because the angle of these long birds was oblique\u00a0to me I didn’t have enough depth of field to get everything sharp but I still thought the images demonstrated the behaviors well enough.<\/p>\n

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

Two behaviors indicative of pair bonds between mated pairs of Western (or Clark’s) Grebes are “Ratchet pointing” and “Dip-shaking”. The behaviors are often alternated, one after the other. I photographed both of them as they were performed by a pair of Western Grebes three days ago at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23977,"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":[338,334,735,366],"tags":[731,49,1335,2023,1539,1908,2024,2022],"class_list":["post-23972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-clarks-grebes","category-western-grebes","tag-aechmophorus-occidentalis","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-call","tag-dip-shaking","tag-mated-pair","tag-pair-bonds","tag-ratchet-pointing","tag-wesstern-grebe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/western-grebe-0931-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6eE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23972","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=23972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}