{"id":5957,"date":"2012-06-10T06:13:56","date_gmt":"2012-06-10T12:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=5957"},"modified":"2012-09-02T15:53:34","modified_gmt":"2012-09-02T21:53:34","slug":"clarks-grebe-chicks-competing-for-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/10\/clarks-grebe-chicks-competing-for-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Clark’s Grebe Chicks Competing For Food"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the\u00a0Clark’s Grebe\u00a0behaviors I was able to photograph last week was the adults feeding their chicks.\u00a0 The youngsters would be on the back of one parent while the other one brought in fish for breakfast.\u00a0 They were always\u00a0small fish, to accommodate\u00a0the very\u00a0young chicks.<\/p>\n

Some of these aren’t great photos but collectively I think they tell an interesting story.\u00a0 I had been shooting faster action\u00a0just prior to this sequence so\u00a0my settings for the first shot aren’t particularly appropriate but then I quickly adjusted.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"clarks-grebe-5490\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The parent bringing in the fish wouldn’t give them directly to the chicks but instead would\u00a0hand them off to its mate and then that bird would feed the youngsters on its back.\u00a0 Here the parent on the left has just given this small fish to the brooding adult.<\/p>\n

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\"clarks-grebe-5502\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

The chick in the water knew it had no chance to get the fish while it was\u00a0there so it immediately made a bee-line for\u00a0the back of its parent.\u00a0 When they’re this size they still struggle to get on board. \u00a0Sometimes the parent sticks\u00a0a leg out backward for the chick to climb up on but this youngster was on its own and was frantic to get up front where the food would be doled out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"clarks-grebe-5505\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0I imagine it’s not easy getting up there since they have to work against the grain of the feathers of the adult..<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"clarks-grebe-5508\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0but this chick gave it the old college try and attempted to get up front before its sibling got the fish.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"clarks-grebe-5509\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Here the little\u00a0guy has made it\u00a0– that’s “him” in the foreground with his sibling behind the parent’s neck.\u00a0 You’ll notice that his feet are still sticking out above the tail of the parent – that’s how stretched out he is to get at the fishy prize.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"clarks-grebe-5512\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Now the question is “who gets the fish?”<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"clarks-grebe-5534\"<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/8, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

In the end all that effort was rewarded as you can see.<\/p>\n

A note about exposure for these grebes.\u00a0 When the birds are facing the sun (as\u00a0they were for most of these shots) the neck whites are devilishly difficult to expose properly.\u00a0\u00a0It really hurts to have to delete an otherwise\u00a0great image because the whites are blown.\u00a0 Just another challenge for the bird photographer…<\/p>\n

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

One of the\u00a0Clark’s Grebe\u00a0behaviors I was able to photograph last week was the adults feeding their chicks.\u00a0 The youngsters would be on the back of one parent while the other one brought in fish for breakfast.\u00a0 They were always\u00a0small fish, to accommodate\u00a0the very\u00a0young chicks. Some of these aren’t great photos but collectively I think they tell an interesting story.\u00a0 I had been shooting faster action\u00a0just prior to this sequence so\u00a0my settings for the first shot aren’t particularly appropriate but then I quickly adjusted.   1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc\u00a0 The parent bringing in the fish wouldn’t give them directly to the chicks but instead would\u00a0hand them off to its mate and then that bird would feed the youngsters on its back.\u00a0 Here the parent on the left has just given this small fish to the brooding adult.     \u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc The chick in the water knew it had no chance to get the fish while it was\u00a0there so it immediately made a bee-line for\u00a0the back of its parent.\u00a0 When they’re this size they still struggle to get on board. \u00a0Sometimes the parent sticks\u00a0a leg out backward for the chick to climb up on but this youngster was on its own and was frantic to get up front where the food would be doled out.     \u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc \u00a0I imagine it’s not easy getting up there since they have to work against the grain of the feathers of the…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,334,735,392],"tags":[736,481,88,136,141,709],"class_list":["post-5957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-clarks-grebes","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-aechomophorus-clarkii","tag-chick","tag-clarks-grebe","tag-feeding","tag-fish","tag-food"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-1y5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5957","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=5957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}