{"id":35030,"date":"2015-11-11T06:16:21","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T13:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=35030"},"modified":"2015-11-11T06:39:50","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T13:39:50","slug":"western-grebes-posing-up-a-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/11\/western-grebes-posing-up-a-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Grebes Posing Up A Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

This time of year our Western Grebes are pretty laid back. The tensions of breeding season are over and most juveniles have learned how to fish so adults don’t have the pressure of providing for them.\u00a0As a result\u00a0these birds spend much of the day resting, sleeping and preening and the patient and attentive\u00a0photographer can catch them in some interesting stretching, water-shaking\u00a0and wing-flapping poses\u00a0(on those\u00a0fairly rare times you\u00a0find one awake..).<\/p>\n

I photographed all of these adult and juvenile Western Grebes just under three weeks ago at Farmington. Some of these images are a little tight but the flip side of that coin is that they have good detail.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is called “foot shaking”, where the bird shakes\u00a0a foot a few times to remove water from the foot before it is bent up and forward and placed under a wing prior to resting.\u00a0This image shows the lobed (not webbed) toes pretty well.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This behavior, called a “swimming shake”, is very common to the species. The bird rises in the water and shakes the body vigorously beginning at the tail and ending with the head before subsiding back down into the water. It is presumed that it functions in arranging feathers, so it’s a form of rousing though they don’t extend their wings when they do it.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I caught this grebe in a wing-flap and though it’s facing partly away from me the angle provides a nice view of the extended right wing and I like the look\u00a0at the scapulars (feathers on the back between the wing attachments) as the action ruffles them up and throws them away from the body.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

In my experience this stretching pose is\u00a0fairly unique to Western (and Clark’s) Grebes and for me it’s an entertaining one. The neck is stretched forward over the water with the head pointed slightly up and both wings are stretched either vertically or out over\u00a0the water.<\/p>\n

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\"western<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a less common pose from the species that I’ve seldom been able to photograph. When they do it they often hold their wings in this position for several seconds and this time I had a good angle on the bird. I’m not sure of its function – it may simply be a type of wing stretch or it may be a communicative behavior.<\/p>\n

It often takes a long time to catch one of these poses as this time of year the grebes spend a large part of their day sleeping. At times while I’ve been waiting for something interesting to happen I’ve almost nodded off myself. To get this many interesting poses in a single session was unusual for me.<\/p>\n

Good birds!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

This time of year our Western Grebes are pretty laid back. The tensions of breeding season are over…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35031,"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":[334,395,366],"tags":[24,731,1008,2724,190,880,1240,511,322],"class_list":["post-35030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-western-grebes","tag-adult","tag-aechmophorus-occidentalis","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-foot-shaking","tag-juvenile","tag-lobed-feet","tag-shaking","tag-stretching","tag-western-grebe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/western-grebe-9680-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-970","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35030","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=35030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}