Grebes with Chicks

If you’re too late to watch the rehearsals and the courtship, it’s always fun to stick around and watch the Clark’s Grebes with their chicks. I was fascinated when I saw this mother (for the sake of this narrative I’m assuming that the first grebe was the mother and the second was the father) trying to herd two chicks. First she followed the one that went to the left,

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but almost instantly changed her mind, following the one on the right, instead, as the two chicks got further apart.

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The chick on the right swam toward the mother, apparently content to be close to her.

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After catching up with that chick, the mother vocalized several times quite distinctly.

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Unfortunately, I understand Horned Grebes but not Clark’s Grebes, so I’m not sure if she was calling to the other chick or to the other parent. I do know that the chick with her started vocalizing right afterwards.

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It didn’t take long before the presumed dad was tending to the chick that had swam away from the mother.

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Apparently satisfied that the problem had been solved, the mother and the other chick snuggled up to each other.

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It’s hard not to anthromorphise birds we observe, but it seemed pretty clear that these parents were as concerned for their wandering young as any of us would be.

Rehearsal

I kept waiting for all the Clark’s Grebes I saw to break out into a full-blown courtship dance, but it never happened. I suspect that almost everything I saw was a rehearsal, or perhaps a warm-up, for the real thing, a full-blown courtship.

This was the cutest sequence to me, though I’m assuming that they really weren’t courting here since there were four, not two, grebes. These three grebes seemed very concentrated on the approaching grebe.

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Suddenly three of the grebes rose up in the water and took off faster than I could have imagined possible.

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Almost as fast, two of the three stopped , while the third kept going, as seen by his wake going off-screen.

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Eventually, even the third one stopped and the other three caught up with it,

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and all four paddled off, just as if nothing had happened,

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though the one that had gone the furthest suddenly started looking back

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until all four disappeared behind the bushes.It certainly never looked like there was any real courtship going on here.

I recorded one other sequence where two grebes were preening and “necking.”

Curiously, all three sequences are part of the courtship shown in this famous BBC courtship sequence:

It’s electrifying watching the courtship on-screen, but it was equally thrilling watching the rehearsal in real life. Hopefully, I’ll live long enough to witness a full courtship live.

Clark’s Grebes Courting

The most common bird I saw at Bear River this visit had to be the Western/Clark Grebe, and luckily, they were also the most entertaining, though it’s hard to show why they were so entertaining with still shots. I really do need to sit down for a while and learn how to take movies with my Canon SLR and then buy something to edit those movies.

I don’t know enough about Grebe behavior to know what all the different grebes were doing, but it looked like they were in very different stages of courting and mating. Heck, I saw at least one pair with two large babies, another pair seriously “necking,” others running across the water as they’re supposed to do during mating (though it seemed odd that there were four of them running at the same time), and these two who look like they might have just been flirting with each other.

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This strip is made up of 9 sequential pictures taken over 40 seconds or so (don’t look too closely because Photoshop wasn’t able to blend all the waves correctly). I was waiting for them to get up and run across the water and dive together after this initial flirtation, but they apparently weren’t ready for that serious of a commitment.

These certainly seem to be Clark’s Grebes, so I wonder if they perform different mating rituals than the Western Grebes I’ve seen so many films of. Watching them wasn’t quite as fantastic as watching the Sage Grouse courtship in Malheur last year, but it wasn’t far behind. I spent hours photographing the grebes, which is why it has taken me so long to trim them down to the best shots and still convey a sense of the magic that was happening in front of me.

The White-Faced Ibis Kept their Distance

Another bird I always enjoy seeing at Bear River is the White-Faced Ibis because we never see them on the west side of the Cascades. There were large flocks of them at Bear River, but they seemed unusually shy this time. As I approached them the closest birds would fly off and before I could reach the next group they, too, would have taken off.

Trying to get shots of birds flying overhead while still rolling forward on a steeply banked gravel road is not conducive to great shots,

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but at least two of the birds seem to be in focus.

What’s strangest about this is that I’ve never noticed White-Faced Ibis to be so flighty before. Most of the time they’re just plain indifferent to birders in their cars. This ibis which was in a field with Avocets and Stilts, and not with a flock of White-Faced Ibis seemed totally indifferent to me, just as the avocets were.

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If it hadn’t been so distant and if the sun hadn’t been behind it, this might have been “the shot” I was looking for. The brilliant breeding colors are clearly there.

The grass was still short enough in this field that you could see the White-Faced Ibis’ distinctive beak and see how well they blend in with their habitat.

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Strangely enough, I had nearly the same experience at Malheur where I went right after leaving Bear River. Both places had large flocks of Ibis but they were so flighty that if I didn’t know better I would have thought it was hunting season. Coincidentally, this is the first time I haven’t seen the Ibis dispersed with avocets and stilts, and I can’t help but wonder if that doesn’t have something to do with their sensitivity to intruders.

This failure to get a single excellent shot of a White-Faced Ibis, one of the most numerous birds on the refuge, was one of the few frustrating moments at Bear River.