{"id":61056,"date":"2018-07-09T05:06:31","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T11:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=61056"},"modified":"2018-07-09T06:59:43","modified_gmt":"2018-07-09T12:59:43","slug":"western-grebe-with-chick-hitchhikers-being-cute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/09\/western-grebe-with-chick-hitchhikers-being-cute\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Grebe With Chick Hitchhikers Being ‘Cute’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nothing major, just some kinda\u00a0fun stuff from the youngsters (and yes, I usually try to avoid using\u00a0the word ‘cute’ but sometimes no other word gets the job done as well).<\/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

Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge has always been my go-to place for Western and Clark’s Grebe chicks, at least it was\u00a0until the last two years when construction activities at the refuge\u00a0resulted in draining major ponds and canals\u00a0which has prevented birds from nesting and foraging in large areas of the refuge (a slightly\u00a0sore point with me and others because of\u00a0its timing and how it was done but that’s another story…). So for two\u00a0seasons now visitors have had\u00a0little access to nesting grebes and other birds but 3 summers ago grebes were having a nesting heyday and I\u00a0was able to get\u00a0many photos I like very much.<\/p>\n

The trailing chick in this shot had been trying desperately to climb\u00a0onto its parent’s back\u00a0without any luck. When they’re this size there isn’t quite\u00a0enough room up there for 3 of them comfortably and there’s already two chicks on board\u00a0(one of them is hard to make out because its head is hidden behind the lower neck of the adult).<\/p>\n

I’ve posted other photos of this chick where its efforts to climb aboard were a little more aggressive but\u00a0with the chick’s bill buried in the feathers of the adult\u00a0I thought this one was kind of\u00a0interesting too, partly\u00a0because\u00a0I have to\u00a0wonder\u00a0if the chick was grasping\u00a0some of those feathers\u00a0in its bill and being pulled\u00a0through the water. Maybe, maybe not but that’s what I’d have done.<\/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

Eleven minutes later the dynamics had changed. The parent and the chicks were apparently hungry so when the other adult swam by they tried to keep up with it (the adult not back brooding chicks is always the source of their fish meals). Here one of the youngsters had\u00a0apparently jumped overboard and at first it was\u00a0swimming right next to the parent. But it was so anxious for food it swam in front of him\/her and was almost pushed beneath the surface when the faster adult began to run over it. Its face was pushed even further down into the water than this\u00a0before it could\u00a0move off to the other side.<\/p>\n

I’ve deliberately cropped this image to show the tail of the adult they were chasing after.<\/p>\n

I miss having access to the nesting grebes. I’ll get over it but I haven’t yet…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Nothing major, just some kinda fun stuff from the youngsters.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61058,"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":[338,334,395,366],"tags":[731,738,49,322],"class_list":["post-61056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-western-grebes","tag-aechmophorus-occidentalis","tag-back-brooding","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-western-grebe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/western-grebe-1536-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-fSM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61056","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=61056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}