Eared Grebe - another first.

An eared grebe with chick, photographed at Slack's Slough, Red Deer, Alberta, Aug 10, 2024.

A black bird, on water, with a bright red eye, certainly stands out.  Sometimes called the black-necked grebe, both sexes share identical plumages.  I did not see the "eared" feathering, which are "golden plumes fanning out from behind the right eye" (click here for reference).  As the summer progresses they lose the distinctive feathers characteristic of the species during breeding season.

Grebes typically are fish eaters, but the eared grebe is a little different.  Its smaller size, small head, and delicate bill are well-suited for eating aquatic invertebrates.  It prefers shallow bodies of water where food is easy to find.  It is interesting that the young can swim an hour after hatching.

I used my 500 mm with a 1.4x teleconverter mounted on a tripod to get this shot.  The cropped-sensor camera multiplied the 700 mm to a relative 1050 mm giving about 21x magnification.  Even with all that power, the bird was still relatively small in my eyepiece.  You can see in the image below (inset) and what the actual view through my camera's eyepiece was like.

Eared grebe and chick; inset shows actual camera view.  The framed center is the cropped image.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com