{"id":53563,"date":"2017-11-16T06:00:53","date_gmt":"2017-11-16T13:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=53563"},"modified":"2017-11-16T06:00:53","modified_gmt":"2017-11-16T13:00:53","slug":"western-grebes-a-family-affair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/16\/western-grebes-a-family-affair\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Grebes – A Family Affair"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a variety of reasons this might have been my most rewarding session ever with a family of Western Grebes and I actually had five of them to play with.<\/p>\n

I photographed them in August of 2015 at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. The\u00a0bond between adults and chicks was adorable,\u00a0the water colors and patterns\u00a0were often pleasing, I was able to get\u00a0reflections of the birds in the water that I liked and the grebes were close so I couldn’t ask for much more.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/8, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the female with one of the three chicks on her back.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/8, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

But usually the larger\u00a0male was carrying the heavier load. Adult Western Grebes can be challenging to sex but if you compare these first two photos you’ll notice the longer and thicker bill of the male.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/8, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In this shot there’s a third youngster hoping to climb aboard but there wasn’t enough room at the inn. I like the bent-neck pose of the male as he investigates a floating stick.<\/p>\n

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1\/500, f\/18, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I was both delighted and disappointed with this shot. It’s almost\u00a0impossible to get eye contact from five birds in the same photo but it happened here and I even got a catch light in each one. I was also\u00a0pretty excited about capturing the entire family in the same shot but was worried\u00a0I wouldn’t have enough\u00a0depth of field to get them\u00a0all sharp. Going to f\/18 solved that problem.<\/p>\n

But my\u00a0success in those areas\u00a0was tempered by the busy reflections in the water and the fact that the bill of the female intersects the head of one of the chicks.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/8, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Occasionally\u00a0I can’t resist dinking around with my images just for the fun of it. This composition doesn’t work well but I still love the closeup look at the chick and its reflection (some readers may recognize this youngster, reflection and setting because this shot was taken\u00a0only seconds after the one published by National Geographic<\/a> last year).<\/p>\n

Sometimes I’ll spend hours playing around with my photos like this just because I enjoy it. Apparently I’m easily entertained…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

For a variety of reasons this might have been my most rewarding session ever with a family of Western Grebes and I actually had five of them to play with.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53566,"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":[338,6,334,366],"tags":[731,33,738,49,740,105,3671,659,137,211,1409,322],"class_list":["post-53563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-western-grebes","tag-aechmophorus-occidentalis","tag-aperture","tag-back-brooding","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-chicks","tag-depth-of-field","tag-difference-between-male-and-female","tag-family","tag-female","tag-male","tag-national-geographic","tag-western-grebe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/western-grebe-1673-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-dVV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53563","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=53563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}