{"id":35090,"date":"2015-11-13T05:27:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T12:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=35090"},"modified":"2015-11-13T05:27:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T12:27:59","slug":"i-thought-this-grebe-might-break-its-neck-during-this-stretch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/13\/i-thought-this-grebe-might-break-its-neck-during-this-stretch\/","title":{"rendered":"I Thought This Grebe Might Break Its Neck During This Stretch"},"content":{"rendered":"

My title may be slight hyperbole but not by much. I actually made that statement to Mia immediately after\u00a0photographing this behavior.<\/p>\n

Many grebe species have distinctive stretching styles. When Western and Clark’s Grebes stretch they typically lay their long necks and heads on the surface of the water (that style can be seen here<\/a>, 4th image down) but Pied-billed Grebes do it very differently as you’re about to see.<\/p>\n

I photographed this bird yesterday morning at Farmington Bay WMA. A darned coot swam in front of the bird at the very beginning of the stretch so please do your best to ignore it. The image techs for the first image apply to all nine images.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500-1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I was able to get my lens on the\u00a0grebe very soon after the stretch began. It raised its wings and began to put a weird kink in its neck.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

The forward bend in the neck almost appeared double-jointed as it began to tilt its head upward.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

The neck began to straighten and the bill to open.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Then the neck became almost straight and the bill pointed straight up.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

The grebe then brought its wings forward as the head tilted even further backwards.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

As the angle of the head became even more extreme the bird began a jaw stretch to go along with the body stretch. When I look at this image for a few moments it becomes an optical illusion for me with the head twisted 180 degrees so that I think I’m seeing the left eye rather than the\u00a0right. Only the curve of the upper bill corrects that illusion (it may or may not work for you…).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

The bird closed its eyes…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

and then began to lower its head and wings as the jaw stretch continued.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

A moment later the grebe returned to a typical resting posture.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill – after all it’s only a stretch. But I’m interested in most any bird behavior and I thought this stretching style was quite interesting, even amusing.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

My title may be slight hyperbole but not by much.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35097,"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":[334,395,359],"tags":[1008,1621,251,993],"class_list":["post-35090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-pied-billed-grebes","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-optical-illusion","tag-pied-billed-grebe","tag-podilymbus-podiceps"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/pied-billed-grebe-3071-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-97Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35090","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=35090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}