{"id":35200,"date":"2015-11-18T06:15:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T13:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=35200"},"modified":"2015-11-18T08:01:02","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T15:01:02","slug":"a-playful-juvenile-western-grebe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/18\/a-playful-juvenile-western-grebe\/","title":{"rendered":"A Playful Juvenile Western Grebe"},"content":{"rendered":"

One definition of play is “to occupy oneself in an activity for amusement or recreation”. Many bird species are known to play and I photographed a juvenile Western Grebe doing just that three days ago at Farmington Bay WMA. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

The grebe spotted a waterlogged stick or piece of vegetation just below the surface of the water, reached down to grab it and after manipulating it in its beak for a moment it…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

gave the stick a fling so that it landed a few inches in front of the bird.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The grebe obviously watched where it landed…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

retrieved it a second time…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

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

and then gave it another fling.<\/p>\n

Some might say that claiming that birds play is being anthropomorphic but I disagree. In fact, I’m beginning to believe that the use of the term anthropomorphism is becoming somewhat anachronistic as it is often applied to the behaviors of higher vertebrates. The term has its place but I’m of the opinion that humans and many animals share more behaviors and even emotions\u00a0than we have long thought they did.<\/p>\n

Cornell’s Birds of North America Online (BNA)\u00a0includes a “play” category in their descriptions of the behavior of many bird species. For Western Grebes they list play as simply “not reported”. Well, I’d report this example to them if I thought it would do any\u00a0good but in the past when I’ve reported “unknown” bird behaviors\u00a0to BNA (documented by photographs)\u00a0it has been ignored. Perhaps they only accept behavioral examples as verified when they come from bona fide scientific researchers but I really don’t know.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many bird species are known to play and I photographed a juvenile Western Grebe doing just that three days ago at Farmington Bay WMA. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35202,"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":[731,935,54,1008,190,999,322],"class_list":["post-35200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-western-grebes","tag-aechmophorus-occidentalis","tag-anthropomorphism","tag-birds-of-north-america-online","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-juvenile","tag-play","tag-western-grebe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/western-grebe-3905-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-99K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35200","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=35200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}