A Ruffled Western Grebe

With over 150 shots of Western/Clark’s Grebes taken on the two previous visits, I was looking for different birds not more grebes on our last drive through Bear River. However, while scanning for birds this Western Grebe looked different from others I had seen. It was off by itself instead of paired off, and, more importantly, her feathers looked oddly “ruffled.” A closer look quickly revealed why.

This Western Grebe had two rather large chicks on her back,

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and though it was too far out to hear, one chick was particularly vocal,

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even while its sibling seemed content to doze off.

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It wasn’t until I examined the photos on my computer that I even realized that there was a sleepy third sibling.

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It wasn’t long before we realized that it was dad that they youngster was calling to.

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Dad didn’t appear to have a fish, but he headed directly to the mother and her youngsters and fed one of the chicks.

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5 thoughts on “A Ruffled Western Grebe”

  1. Absolutely delightful pics – love this little feathered family! ♡ (Shared, with attribution and link as always, on the FB “fogwalking” group.)

  2. Hi Loren, I just returned from Bear River. You showed remarkable restraint in only taking 150 shots of Grebes — I probably took 1500. I saw at least 50 grebe with chicks, almost all of them Clark’s. I concluded the Clark’s were earlier than the Western’s, but it appears perhaps it was the other way around. One of the more unusual things I saw was a Western Grebe feeding a fish to a Clark’s Grebe chick.

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