Rushing<\/a><\/span><\/span>” behavior so I quickly switched to my other camera with my smaller lens attached so I could keep them both in frame if they did so.<\/p>\nRushing didn’t happen but something else interesting and related did.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 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>\nOne of the grebes (I’m going to call it the male but it could have been either one because I lost track of which bird was which) dove and came up with a huge beak-full of ‘weeds’ which I immediately recognized as being part of one of their courtship behaviors known as the “Weed Ceremony”. Cornell’s Birds of the World describes the Weed Ceremony as follows:<\/p>\n
\n- Weed-diving follows, in which bird in neck-stretched posture suddenly dives vertically, head entering water near base of neck, bird brings organic material from below, surfacing in erect posture. When one bird dives, second usually does also. When both birds have weeds, they approach, feet churning, and rise into vertical posture with most or all of body out of water, necks stretched upward, bills raised 20\u00b0 to 80\u00b0 above horizontal. Birds move slowly forward or spiral, heads may be rotated intermittently from side to side. Display ends when one bird discards weeds with quick head shakes and resumes horizontal body posture; other then follows suit.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I knew that during the ceremony both birds typically have weeds in their bills so that’s exactly what I expected would happen.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 2500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @400mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nBut it didn’t.<\/p>\n
He obviously expected his mate to participate, or at least hoped she would, but she rejected his advances and swam to the west as she reached the larger expanse of water, completely ignoring him as she did so. The jilted male looked incredibly disappointed as he stopped in the water and watched her go. He kept the weeds in his bill until it became obvious that his mate wasn’t going to participate before dropping them and following her to the west.<\/p>\n
So I wasn’t able to photograph either the Rushing behavior or the complete Weed Ceremony. But I figure an incomplete Weed Ceremony is better than no ceremony at all.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Or at least part of the ceremony. One of the potential participants was a reluctant performer.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n