{"id":29856,"date":"2015-03-02T06:09:40","date_gmt":"2015-03-02T13:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=29856"},"modified":"2015-03-02T06:09:40","modified_gmt":"2015-03-02T13:09:40","slug":"pied-billed-grebe-beating-up-on-a-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/02\/pied-billed-grebe-beating-up-on-a-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"Pied-billed Grebe Beating Up On A Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pied-billed Grebes like to “soften” their prey up a bit before swallowing it.<\/p>\n

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

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This grebe had captured a Weather Loach a couple of months ago at Farmington Bay.\u00a0Pied-billed Grebes have stout bills powered by strong jaw muscles that they use to abuse and crush their prey before swallowing\u00a0(they’re crayfish specialists so they have no problem with small fish). In my experience they also tend to shake\u00a0their prey which is what this bird is doing. This shaking can be so vigorous and violent that I’ve seen frogs that were completely dismembered and torn apart by the process.<\/p>\n

Movement is so quick during\u00a0shaking that\u00a0I prefer to use\u00a0high shutter speeds to photograph it. Here, 1\/2000 sec wasn’t quite fast enough so the bird’s head and the fish\u00a0were slightly soft (I applied a little extra sharpening there in an attempt to remedy the softness).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I include this image only to demonstrate that Weather Loaches have an interesting, elongated\u00a0eel-like\u00a0body shape. They’re an invasive species and it is assumed that they gained a foothold at Farmington when unwanted\u00a0pet fish were released into the wild.\u00a0They’re a problem because they compete\u00a0for habitat and resources with\u00a0native fish and eat\u00a0their eggs.<\/p>\n

The behavior of these fish becomes\u00a0frenetic and erratic with changes in barometric pressure, thus their common\u00a0name.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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

Pied-billed Grebes like to “soften” their prey up a bit before swallowing it.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29857,"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":[334,8,392,359],"tags":[2432,397,141,185,251,993,256,1671,282,311,320],"class_list":["post-29856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-pied-billed-grebes","tag-barometric-pressure","tag-farmington-bay","tag-fish","tag-invasive-species","tag-pied-billed-grebe","tag-podilymbus-podiceps","tag-prey","tag-sharpening","tag-shutter-speed","tag-utah-2","tag-weather-loach"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/pied-billed-grebe-6097-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7Ly","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29856","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=29856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}