{"id":47777,"date":"2017-04-25T06:08:54","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T12:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=47777"},"modified":"2017-04-25T06:15:12","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T12:15:12","slug":"rushing-western-grebes-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/25\/rushing-western-grebes-2\/","title":{"rendered":"“Rushing” Western Grebes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally I recycle an older post that I’m particularly\u00a0fond of because very few current readers have ever seen it. This one was published\u00a0June 4, 2012. In this version I’ve rewritten\u00a0some of the text and changed the formatting. <\/em><\/p>\n

Quality photos of rushing Western Grebes (or closely related\u00a0Clark’s Grebes) are\u00a0very hard to get for a variety of reasons\u00a0and they’re highly desirable because the behavior is so spectacular and unique.\u00a0With grebe breeding season coming up quickly I thought this would be a good time to rerun this post – perhaps it will inspire other bird\u00a0photographers to\u00a0work at getting\u00a0their own photos of rushing\u00a0grebes.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The ritualized displays and courtship ceremonies of Western Grebes are among the most complex known in the bird world. One of\u00a0them is called the \u201crushing ceremony\u201d which includes 5 distinct\u00a0phases \u2013 only one of which is actually referred to as\u00a0\u201crushing\u201d.\u00a0Yesterday\u00a0I finally <\/em>\u00a0was able to photograph\u00a0this most dramatic part of the display\u00a0and believe me it\u2019s been a long time coming.<\/p>\n

I was\u00a0photographing a pair of these grebes with chicks and though I was aware of another small group of grebes a little further away I was concentrating so intently on those chicks that at first\u00a0I didn\u2019t notice\u00a0that the behavior of two of the birds in that group had suddenly changed. When their\u00a0display began all I had time to do was\u00a0quickly aim\u00a0my lens at these birds and fire away. I very nearly missed the performance entirely and I was lucky to be able to lock focus on them because the behavior had already begun.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western-grebe-4720\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0When rushing the two birds (usually a mated pair but two males may\u00a0also do it to\u00a0attract females) lunge forward and rise completely out of the water.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0As their legs and feet start to churn the water\u00a0at incredible speeds\u00a0their bodies begin to raise up\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western-grebe-4733\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

until the birds are almost completely vertical to the water and their feet are slapping the\u00a0surface so fast (16-20 steps per second) that the slapping\u00a0and splashing noise is loud enough to be heard a great distance away.\u00a0The wings are lifted but never extended.<\/p>\n

The female is on the\u00a0right \u2013 note her smaller size.\u00a0The bill of the female is also shorter and thinner than that of the male and it has a slightly upturned appearance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western-grebe-4735\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Both birds run across the surface of the water in a choreographed manner for up to 65 feet before ending the display by diving head first into the water. Neither bird makes any vocalization during the process.<\/p>\n

I fired a burst of this\u00a0behavior and got 17 shots of it but in many of them at least one of the birds was soft. And of course my buffer had filled by the time the display was over so I missed them diving into the water at the end of the performance.<\/p>\n

But I have about a half-dozen more quality\u00a0images of\u00a0the behavior than I had before so I\u2019m still delighted.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

The ritualized displays and courtship ceremonies of Western Grebes are among the most complex known in the bird world.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31288,"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":true,"_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":[338,5,334,391,366],"tags":[731,49,2946,732,322],"class_list":["post-47777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-western-grebes","tag-aechmophorus-occidentalis","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-breeding-behavior","tag-rushing","tag-western-grebe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/western-grebe-4721.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-cqB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47777","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=47777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}