{"id":32191,"date":"2015-06-22T04:30:47","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T10:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=32191"},"modified":"2015-06-22T04:46:06","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T10:46:06","slug":"western-grebe-on-the-nest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/22\/western-grebe-on-the-nest\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Grebe On The Nest"},"content":{"rendered":"

I seldom get an opportunity to photograph a grebe of any species on a nest so I’ll take the shot even if the bird has its back to me. At least this\u00a0Western Grebe\u00a0gave me a partial head turn in compensation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western1\/1000, f\/8, ISO 500, +0 EV,\u00a0Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I photographed this bird four days ago along the auto tour route at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. Both sexes incubate so I don’t know if this is the male or female. The bird was insistent about looking straight ahead so I was able to get only a few shots with its head turned to the side.<\/p>\n

For me the nest is at least as interesting as the grebe. Western Grebe nests are typically floating platforms or built up from the bottom and\u00a0are made from coarse emergent stems and algae or sodden material from the bottom, as seems to be the case here. On average eggs require 24 days to hatch and the chicks leave the nest on their parents backs almost immediately (back brooding). The nest is often used again by other late-nesting pairs of grebes so I may be watching this\u00a0one for weeks to come.<\/p>\n

I centered the bird in this composition in order to show the entire nest in good detail and the image is in need of slight leveling but I\u00a0decided not to do so because that would cut off the top of the head in the reflection (photographers will likely understand why). The squarish crop\u00a0is also a result of the same conundrum but all things considered I believe I chose the lesser of two evils.<\/p>\n

I may get another look at the nest later this morning. If so I hope the incubating bird is facing me this time…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Addendum – Composing this post reminded me of another incident that took place on the same morning I photographed the grebe on the nest. It’s not a memory I’m proud of but I decided to fess up anyway.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"unknownI spotted this unusual looking gray duck buried deep in the reeds and thought I had found an unusual or rare species I was unfamiliar with so I stalked it carefully hoping to get a shot that was at least good enough for ID before it took off. It appeared to be sleeping and stayed hidden in the vegetation as I approached.\u00a0I thought it might be dead.<\/p>\n

But eventually we figured out what was really going on. It’s a damn decoy!<\/p>\n

Boy, did I feel stupid…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I seldom get an opportunity to photograph a grebe of any species on a nest so I’ll take the shot even if the bird has its back to me. At least this Western Grebe gave me a partial head turn in compensation.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32194,"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],"tags":[1569,49,52,916,2538,2077,2537,228,311,322],"class_list":["post-32191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","tag-aechomophorus-occidentalis","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-bird-photography","tag-composition","tag-hunters-decoy","tag-incubating","tag-leveling","tag-nest","tag-utah-2","tag-western-grebe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/western-grebe-2187b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8nd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32191","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=32191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}