{"id":41959,"date":"2016-09-06T05:46:21","date_gmt":"2016-09-06T11:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=41959"},"modified":"2016-09-06T07:05:32","modified_gmt":"2016-09-06T13:05:32","slug":"western-grebe-swallowing-a-catfish-can-be-dangerous-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/06\/western-grebe-swallowing-a-catfish-can-be-dangerous-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Grebe – Swallowing A Catfish Can Be Dangerous Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suspect this Western Grebe may have had a previous and unpleasant experience with a catfish.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/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<\/strong><\/p>\n

Based on bill size and shape I believe this was the male of the pair I photographed yesterday at Bear River\u00a0Migratory Bird Refuge. The female and their single large juvenile offspring were nearby. By the time I was able to train my lens on him he already had this young catfish in his bill. Typically grebes swallow fish very soon after capture but this\u00a0time was an exception.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/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

Many times he appeared to try to swallow the fish but then abandoned the attempt and…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/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<\/strong><\/p>\n

went back to beating the crap out of it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/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 it would manipulate the fish in its bill…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/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

and try again.<\/p>\n

This went on for eight minutes and I don’t know how long it was occurring before I got the bird in my viewfinder. At first I was puzzled by why it took so long. It certainly wasn’t because the fish was so large he had difficulty getting it down. I’ve seen adult Western Grebes swallow fish much larger than this one with ease.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/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

But that was before I realized the prey was a catfish. Usually these birds are eating young carp and I’d assumed that to be the case here. I was wrong.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/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

A huge crop of the previous image shows one of the barbels (“whiskers”) of the catfish but we can also see one of the dangers of swallowing them.<\/p>\n

Most catfish species (electric catfish are the exception) possess\u00a0strong, sharp bony spines on the leading edge of their dorsal and pectoral fins. Those spines can be defensively erected and they’re particularly sharp and dangerous on small catfish like this young channel cat. In some species they’re even venomous. Here I’ve marked the tip of the spine on the dorsal fin with a red arrow.<\/p>\n

I strongly suspect the reason\u00a0it took so long for the grebe to swallow the fish (if it ever did) was because it was still alive and kept erecting its spines during the beginning of the swallowing process. Catfish are notoriously difficult to kill.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/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

During that eight minutes the juvenile grebe repeatedly approached its parent and begged for the fish but the adult refused to relinquish it and always swam the other direction. I suspect it knew the danger the fish would present to its inexperienced youngster.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

1\/2000, 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

The male continued to bash the fish for a very long time but each time he tried to swallow it he abandoned the attempt even after it was obviously dead (by then the fish had been punctured several times by his bill).<\/p>\n

I had a hard time keeping my lens on the bird because he kept swimming behind foreground vegetation and once\u00a0when I moved my pickup to get a clear view again the fish had disappeared in the interim. I don’t know if it was swallowed or deliberately released.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – If you have the interest (and the stomach for it) here’s a link<\/a> to a google image search of “catfish wounds”. These images illustrate why the\u00a0grebe was being so careful but be forewarned – many of them are graphic so proceed with caution!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

FYI for locals\u00a0– Bear River MBR is extremely dry and very few birds are accessible. I don’t remember ever seeing it so bone-dry this time of year. And just think – state officials\u00a0are pushing for several more dams to be built upstream on the Bear River to accommodate development and agriculture which will further reduce flow to the refuge and the severely receding\u00a0Great Salt Lake.<\/em><\/p>\n

Our state government at work…\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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

I suspect this Western Grebe may have had a previous and unpleasant experience with a catfish.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41966,"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":[338,334,392,366],"tags":[731,3098,3100,49,3096,2681,141,190,211,256,3097,322,3099],"class_list":["post-41959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-western-grebes","tag-aechmophorus-occidentalis","tag-barbels","tag-bear-river-dams","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-catfish","tag-channel-catfish","tag-fish","tag-juvenile","tag-male","tag-prey","tag-spine","tag-western-grebe","tag-whiskers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/western-grebe-2935-big-crop-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-aUL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41959","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=41959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}