{"id":35727,"date":"2015-12-11T06:18:58","date_gmt":"2015-12-11T13:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=35727"},"modified":"2015-12-11T06:38:53","modified_gmt":"2015-12-11T13:38:53","slug":"a-pb-grebe-behavior-explosion-on-the-farmington-4-way-pond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/11\/a-pb-grebe-behavior-explosion-on-the-farmington-4-way-pond\/","title":{"rendered":"A PB Grebe Behavior Explosion On The Farmington 4-Way Pond"},"content":{"rendered":"

These grebes are typically pretty lethargic this time of year but on this morning things went a little nuts for a few minutes.<\/p>\n

The birds on the pond are mostly coots but there’s usually\u00a0about a dozen Pied-billed Grebes mixed in. The\u00a0three primary activities of the grebes are\u00a0sleeping\/resting, fishing and grooming, in that order.\u00a0Often you have to wait quite a while to see them do much of anything except resting. But several weeks ago there was a burst of interesting behaviors from many of the grebes that lasted for several minutes that I wish I could fully understand or know the implications of.<\/p>\n

All of these images are presented in the order they were taken.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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 the bird that set it all off when it rose in the\u00a0water and began to flap its wings. This isn’t unusual behavior in itself but as you’re about to see, what was<\/em> unusual was how long it continued. By the time I was able to get my lens trained on the bird it had already been flapping for several seconds.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

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

In several of my images it looked like the silly bird only had one wing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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’m\u00a0glad I had enough shutter speed to freeze those little buzz-saw wings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is what I call my “they went that-a-way” shot.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’d estimate that the flapping behavior lasted at least 20 seconds (it made me tired to watch it…). Before the bird settled back down into the water I had filled my buffer several times (each time you have to wait for it to recover before continuing to shoot bursts). I took 78 shots of the\u00a0bird as it flapped. But even when the grebe was through flapping its performance wasn’t over because…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

it didn’t pull its wings back in for a long time. It held this position for perhaps 10 seconds and the overall performance seemed to inspire a burst of activity from many of the other grebes on the pond.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

Suddenly several of them began running across the water for no apparent purpose. That behavior happens very fast and I never did capture one of them doing it but here you see that one of the grebes watched intently as another bird passed closely by (as evidenced by the water splashes).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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

Then\u00a0this bird began to hold\u00a0its wings out just like the first grebe had. \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

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

Then another one followed suit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

And another. Several other grebes did too, though in all the excitement I never got photos of them.<\/p>\n

I can’t fully explain the intensity of what I saw that morning but Pied-billed Grebes have aggressive encounters among themselves throughout the year (not just during breeding season) and I believe that these behaviors were agonistic (associated with conflict or combat). I’ve often seen mini-versions of these behaviors but what surprised me this time was how long it lasted and how it contagiously and quickly spread throughout the group of grebes.<\/p>\n

I’ll always be grateful to that\u00a0first grebe. In the past I’ve never been able to get anywhere near\u00a0that many nice, sharp shots of a flapping bird, no matter the species.<\/p>\n

Good bird!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

These grebes are typically pretty lethargic this time of year but on this morning things went a little nuts for a few minutes.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35731,"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":[334,394,359],"tags":[415,631,1008,251,993,2761],"class_list":["post-35727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-pied-billed-grebes","tag-agonistic-behavior","tag-buffer","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-pied-billed-grebe","tag-podilymbus-podiceps","tag-wing-flapping"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/pied-billed-grebe-4012-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9if","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35727","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=35727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}