I recently heard about some Black-necked Grebes being present on a local lake which is a species I have never seen let alone photographed so decided to go and check them out a couple of weekends back. The first thing that struck me, having located the birds, was how small they were seeming to be just slightly larger than a Little Grebe. There were five birds present on the large lake and it was a question of waiting in one of the public hides and waiting for them to come in close. They were fairly active and it was not too long a wait before a pair of birds appeared right in front of the hide where I was sitting. They were just swimming and diving down for invertebrates and unfortunately not showing any of their tail walking display behaviour. However, always good to get a new species in the library.
Its quite surprising how long their necks are when stretched upwards.
Apart from being very beautiful birds one of their really noticeable features, similar to a Slavonian grebes, is their very bright red eyes.
As you can see from the last couple of photographs the blue reflection on the water off the sky was starting to go as the clouds gathered overhead and the light quickly went down hill so the short but satisfying session was brought to a rapid end.
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3 comments:
Beautiful set Richard. A bird I've yet to see. We had a couple on a local lake a while ago, but unfortunatley I missed them.
Love that look on the last one.
Beautiful pictures, Richard. They come to a lake about 15 miles away but it is on private land and can only be viewed from the road and I doubt the Grebes would be possible to photograph.
Thanks for the comments. You really do need to be close in on these birds for photography as they are suprisingly small.
Cheers
Rich
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