{"id":86631,"date":"2020-06-24T05:31:24","date_gmt":"2020-06-24T11:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=86631"},"modified":"2020-06-24T06:04:14","modified_gmt":"2020-06-24T12:04:14","slug":"western-grebe-on-the-nest-and-then-refurbishing-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/24\/western-grebe-on-the-nest-and-then-refurbishing-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Grebe On The Nest And Then Refurbishing It"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m convinced that at least some birds approach obstacles analytically<\/p>\n

All photos are presented in the order they were taken. With this many photos I ran out of time to include complete image techs but most photos were taken at or near 1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 400 with my Canon 7D Mark II and Canon 500mm f\/4 lens.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Yesterday morning I found this Western Grebe on her nest at Bear River MBR. In this species both sexes incubate but based on bill size and shape I believe this is the female of the pair. I could be wrong but either way I don’t think it makes much difference to the behavior I’ve documented.<\/p>\n

I photographed her on the nest for a few minutes but she wasn’t doing much so I left her to look for other birds.<\/p>\n

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But some time later I could see she was off the nest so I returned. By then the morning sun was warm so any eggs in the nest would be fine unattended for a while and I’m sure she needed a break from the tedious chore of incubation.<\/p>\n

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She mostly just lazed on the water and preened, often dislodging loose feathers during the process. Here she shook her head and two flank feathers went flying through the air. Grebes often eat their own feathers so when they settled on the water I thought she might go after them as they so often do.<\/p>\n

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But she completely ignored both of them as she went about doing what grebes do.<\/p>\n

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Soon she returned to the nest which contained a single egg. Clutch size of this species is 1-4 eggs and they’re laid at 1-2 day intervals so she’ll be laying more eggs soon.<\/p>\n

I thought her behavior near the nest was a little odd. She approached it closely several times, sometimes facing it directly as if she was studying it.<\/p>\n

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Then in her best Teddy Roosevelt imitation she picked up what could only be called a ‘big stick’ with the apparent intention of adding it to her nest.<\/p>\n

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But she never approached the nest from this angle. She stopped in the water as she looked at it and then…<\/p>\n

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circled around in an attempt to approach the nest from the right and behind it. But it was apparently obvious to her that carrying the stick at this angle in her bill through the emergent vegetation would be an impossible task so she…<\/p>\n

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dropped it. Here most of it is still falling to the water.<\/p>\n

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When she picked it up again she was carrying it at more of an oblique angle, presumably because that way it would pass through the vegetation more easily. At this point the nest is about 20′ in front of her but the emergent vegetation became thicker as she approached the nest so…<\/p>\n

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she dropped it again. Here we can see the resulting splash at one end of the stick. She actually dropped the stick about a half dozen times but including all those photos would make this post even longer than it already is.<\/p>\n

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One time when she picked it up again surface tension and adhesion between the stick and the water produced an interesting curtain of water between the stick and the water’s surface.<\/p>\n

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She was nothing if she wasn’t persistent. Eventually by pointing the stick almost straight in front of her as she swam through the ever-thickening vegetation she was finally able to…<\/p>\n

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deliver the stick to the nest.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure why she didn’t approach the nest from the front like she originally could have. She’d have had to go through less vegetation from that direction but she chose to do it the hard way. No matter, she was eventually successful and this photographer sure had fun watching her solve the problem.<\/p>\n

I hope to watch the progress of this nest in the days and weeks to come. Doing so would scratch this grebe-lover’s itch.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I’m convinced that at least some birds approach obstacles analytically<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86638,"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":[338,334,391,366],"tags":[731,1318,121,228,1307,322],"class_list":["post-86631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-nesting-and-mating","category-western-grebes","tag-aechmophorus-occidentalis","tag-clutch-size","tag-egg","tag-nest","tag-nest-building","tag-western-grebe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/western-grebe-3805-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mxh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86631","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=86631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}