Wildlife Photographic Journals

Tranquil Grebes

I finally got round to going through some Great Crested Grebe images that have been sat on my hard drive since earlier in the year. The photographs are from a brief early morning session on a local pond. As I recall it was a beautiful and peaceful morning with very little wind creating calm conditions allowing the water to pick up the colours of the bank side vegetation. The light was also gloriously soft and warm. The scene before me was very serene and a wonderful vista.

The pair of Grebes were doing very little except slowly drifting around on the still surface and so there was no chance of any action photography. However, the combination of light, colours and a low shooting angle combined to produce some pleasing portraits. One of the images has just appeared on the front cover of the local Wildlife Trust's quarterly magazine which is appropriately called 'The Grebe'.

The photography session was fairly short and only totalled about 30-40 minutes. This was mainly due to the quality of the light changing rapidly as the sun headed skyward creating light that was too harsh. However, there was little else I could achieve with the photography given the birds were so inactive. The height of activity was when one bird stopped to preen a feather or two on its neck, but then continued to slowly cruise around the pond.

Overall it was a very relaxed session, except for the inevitable neck strain from lying flat on the ground to get a low angle to the water. As you can see from the selection of photos even by lying in one position a wide variety of background and water colours can be achieved by waiting for the bird to move into a certain area of the pond. I never returned to the Grebes, as I was distracted by other species. Maybe I will try once more next spring when they are very active and hopefully capture some action photographs to add to the library.