{"id":9230,"date":"2012-11-18T04:30:21","date_gmt":"2012-11-18T11:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=9230"},"modified":"2012-11-18T17:18:35","modified_gmt":"2012-11-19T00:18:35","slug":"clarks-grebes-parents-feeding-fish-to-some-very-excited-chicks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/18\/clarks-grebes-parents-feeding-fish-to-some-very-excited-chicks\/","title":{"rendered":"Clark’s Grebes – Parents Feeding Fish To Some Very Excited Chicks"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past June I spent lots of time with Western and Clark’s Grebes as they were raising their families.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The two species are quite similar but the\u00a0adult\u00a0 birds in this post can be recognized as Clark’s Grebes by their bright yellow-orange bills and the fact that their eyes are surrounded by white plumage, rather than black.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"clarks<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000. f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This female of a mated pair was fishing for her family as the male back-brooded two chicks (the sexes take turns with each role).\u00a0 I happened to catch her just as she emerged from the water with a fish and shook the water off.\u00a0 I wish I had better eye contact and more room around the grebe, but this image is full frame.\u00a0 I include it here because it’s the logical beginning of this “fish story”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"clarks<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000. f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Seconds later she\u00a0swam over to deliver the fish to her family.\u00a0 Sometimes the fish will be given to the brooding parent, who may eat it or give it to a chick.\u00a0Other times, the fishing parent gives it directly to one of the youngsters.\u00a0 Either way, if the chicks are hungry they become very excited and aggressive in their attempts to be the one who gets the fish.\u00a0 Before the young birds saw breakfast coming their way, they were tucked down peacefully under each wing with only their heads and necks sticking out.\u00a0 All that changed in an instant.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"clarks<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000. f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0As you can see, both chicks have their eyes on the prize.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"clarks<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000. f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0So much so, that one of the chicks is in danger of falling into the drink.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"clarks<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2000. f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Which is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"clarks<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500. f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong>In fact, it was completely dunked and disappeared under the water.\u00a0 The other youngster got the fish.<\/p>\n

Many folks don’t notice the sexual\u00a0dimorphism\u00a0of grebes (Western or Clark’s) but it’s really pretty easy to tell\u00a0the sexes\u00a0apart if you’re relatively close to the birds.\u00a0\u00a0Males are larger and their bill is longer and much thicker than that of the female.\u00a0 So it becomes obvious that\u00a0the male is the bird on the right.<\/p>\n

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

This past June I spent lots of time with Western and Clark’s Grebes as they were raising their families.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The two species are quite similar but the\u00a0adult\u00a0 birds in this post can be recognized as Clark’s Grebes by their bright yellow-orange bills and the fact that their eyes are surrounded by white plumage, rather than black.   \u00a01\/2000. f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light This female of a mated pair was fishing for her family as the male back-brooded two chicks (the sexes take turns with each role).\u00a0 I happened to catch her just as she emerged from the water with a fish and shook the water off.\u00a0 I wish I had better eye contact and more room around the grebe, but this image is full frame.\u00a0 I include it here because it’s the logical beginning of this “fish story”.     \u00a01\/2000. f\/8, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light Seconds later she\u00a0swam over to deliver the fish to her family.\u00a0 Sometimes the fish will be given to the brooding parent, who may eat it or give it to a chick.\u00a0Other times, the fishing parent gives it directly to one of the youngsters.\u00a0 Either way, if the chicks are hungry they become very excited and aggressive in their attempts to be the one who gets the fish.\u00a0 Before the young birds saw breakfast coming their way, they were tucked down peacefully under each wing with only their heads and necks sticking out.\u00a0 All that changed in an instant.     \u00a0\u00a01\/2000….<\/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":[334,735,392,10],"tags":[986,738,49,740,88,136,141,988,987,276,322],"class_list":["post-9230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-clarks-grebes","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-grebes-2","tag-aechmophorus-clarkii","tag-back-brooding","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-chicks","tag-clarks-grebe","tag-feeding","tag-fish","tag-male-and-female","tag-sexes","tag-sexual-dimorphism","tag-western-grebe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-2oS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9230","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=9230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}