{"id":30819,"date":"2015-04-18T04:44:47","date_gmt":"2015-04-18T10:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=30819"},"modified":"2015-04-18T05:06:50","modified_gmt":"2015-04-18T11:06:50","slug":"western-grebe-behavior-probable-preliminary-to-the-weed-ceremony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/18\/western-grebe-behavior-probable-preliminary-to-the-weed-ceremony\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Grebe Behavior – Probable Preliminary To The “Weed Ceremony”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Western Grebes exhibit two incredibly complex courtship behaviors, the Rushing Ceremony and the Weed Ceremony. I believe the behavior I photographed yesterday morning to be a preliminary to the Weed Ceremony.<\/p>\n

The Weed Ceremony has four distinct stages.\u00a0Two of those stages are called Weed Diving and Weed Dancing where both birds of a mated pair dive and then bring “weeds” to the surface with their bodies held in an erect posture and then perform a complex choreography with the weeds before discarding them.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday morning at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge I photographed this bird of an obviously mated pair immediately after it surfaced with its beak full of aquatic vegetation. Its mate was just out of frame though it didn’t have any weeds. This bird faced its mate with the weeds in its bill as if it was encouraging the other bird to join in the behavior. My pickup on the refuge loop road was very close to both grebes and I suspect that my presence may have prevented the other bird from participating in the behavior, which I regret.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It all happened so quickly that I didn’t even have time to adjust camera settings before firing off a few shots and then the bird dropped the vegetation and the behavior was over. For a variety of reasons I’m fairly\u00a0confident that what I observed wasn’t simply part of the nest-building process. In this image the black, triangular crest is raised, spread laterally and in obvious display (compare the head shape to that in the previous photo – it’s the same bird)\u00a0and I like those bulging, neon-red eyes.<\/p>\n

I’ve photographed the elusive Rushing Ceremony of the Western Grebe<\/a> previously but this was my first opportunity with the Weed Ceremony. I hope to observe and photograph the entire behavior sometime in the future. I’d love to have that opportunity this spring.<\/p>\n

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

Western Grebes exhibit two incredibly complex courtship behaviors, the Rushing Ceremony and the Weed Ceremony. I believe the behavior I photographed yesterday morning to be a preliminary to the Weed Ceremony.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30821,"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":[338,5,334,391,366],"tags":[731,1362,744,2466,2467,2469,2468,322],"class_list":["post-30819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-western-grebes","tag-aechmophorus-occidentalis","tag-courtship-behavior","tag-raised-crest","tag-rushing-ceremony","tag-weed-ceremony","tag-weed-dancing","tag-weed-diving","tag-western-grebe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/western-grebe-9849-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-815","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30819","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=30819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}