{"id":35806,"date":"2015-12-14T04:45:47","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T11:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=35806"},"modified":"2015-12-14T05:40:08","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T12:40:08","slug":"a-grebe-and-a-coot-battle-repeatedly-over-a-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/14\/a-grebe-and-a-coot-battle-repeatedly-over-a-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"A Grebe And A Coot Battle Repeatedly Over A Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

These two birds fought over the fish for over three minutes.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: This post is more about behavior than it is about quality images. In these photos some of the birds are soft, some are in bad lighting, some are facing away from the viewer and some images\u00a0have poor composition. In many cases the action happened so fast I was lucky to get birds in the frame at all. <\/em>And I’ve provided no image techs as I simply ran out of time. (but believe me, I had plenty of shutter speed – usually about 1\/3200 sec)<\/em><\/p>\n

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

The drama began three days ago at the 4-way pond at Farmington when this Pied-billed Grebe caught\u00a0a fish. It isn’t a particularly large one but the grebe didn’t swallow it immediately because they often “tenderize” fish with their bill for a while, apparently to make sure it is dead and possibly to break or soften\u00a0any sharp spines on the fins. In this case\u00a0waiting was a mistake because…<\/p>\n

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

it didn’t take long for this coot to challenge the grebe for the fish. Coots are larger and slower than these grebes but this one was very deliberate in its approach – the grebe would stop for a moment and make tentative attempts at swallowing the fish but the coot just kept on coming, again and again.<\/p>\n

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

In the past I’ve often seen grebes with food dive or run across the water with it to escape but this one had a different tactic. When the coot got close the grebe would release the dead fish into the water. I can guess several possible reasons for this strategy but that’s all they’d be – just guesses.<\/p>\n

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

In this instance both birds lunged for the fish under the surface\u00a0at the same time…<\/p>\n

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

but it was the coot that came up with it.<\/p>\n

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

The coot attempted a get-a-way but the grebe stayed so close it was literally riding its back.<\/p>\n

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

When the coot slowed, the grebe lunged for the fish but it was dropped in the water…<\/p>\n

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

so the grebe repeatedly lowered its body and put its head under water to look for it – here it had just raised its head back up. Regular readers will recognize this image from yesterday’s post.<\/p>\n

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

Here the grebe has pulled its head back before plunging it back into the water in another attempt to find the fish first.<\/p>\n

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

The grebe had the advantage because it looked with its head underwater but the coot only gazed down from the surface.<\/p>\n

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

So it was the grebe that came up with the fish.<\/p>\n

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

But it didn’t get far before the coot caught up with it again, grabbed the fish…<\/p>\n

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

and yanked it away.<\/p>\n

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

But the grebe wasn’t about to give up. It swam tightly against the body of the coot and waited for another opportunity…<\/p>\n

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

and when it came…<\/p>\n

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

the grebe snagged the fish and\u00a0made yet another get-a-way.<\/p>\n

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

It quickly mashed the head of the fish a few times…<\/p>\n

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

and then paused for a moment, almost\u00a0seeming to dare\u00a0the coot to to try to\u00a0steal the fish again before it was swallowed.<\/p>\n

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

But the\u00a0coot knew when it had been licked and the grebe swallowed the fish very quickly.<\/p>\n

Some folks might be surprised to learn that coots eat anything\u00a0other than\u00a0aquatic vascular plants and algae but they’re actually omnivorous and often consume aquatic invertebrates,\u00a0tadpoles and fish. They even\u00a0occasionally eat carrion, something I’ve seen them do several times in the midst of a harsh winter.<\/p>\n

And speaking of winter, I woke up to snow this morning and it’s supposed to continue to fall all day long. That delights me as it’s been a very long time coming.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

These two birds fought over the fish for over three minutes. <\/p>\n

If this post loads slowly for you it’s because it contains 19 images. Sorry for any inconvenience. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35824,"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":[1051,334,392,394,359],"tags":[1052,1008,140,141,251,256],"class_list":["post-35806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-coots","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-pied-billed-grebes","tag-american-coot","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-fighting","tag-fish","tag-pied-billed-grebe","tag-prey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/pied-billed-grebe-9881-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9jw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35806","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=35806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}