Red-necked Grebes mostly breed in Canada and Alaska. Just as I witnessed several years back, they nest on shallow freshwater lakes that have some marsh vegetation around the edges. Their diet mainly consists of fish, crustaceans, and some insects. Hunting in clear water, from top to bottom, they swallow small fish whole before coming to the surface. With larger prey, they come up to the water surface before preparing their prey for swallowing. You can just make out their legs behind them. Due to their location, they would be terrible at getting around on land. Therefore, their nest is located on the surface of the water, made of floating aquatic vegetation anchored to emergent plants or piled directly on the lake bottom in shallow water. Either way, most of the nest lies underwater. Clutch sizes tend to be between 1 to 9 eggs. After hatching, the chicks will spend most of their time on the back of their parents until they are 10 to 17 days old, increasing the cuteness factor tenfold. The pairs usually separate once the young are fully fledged, at about four weeks of age. Wintering occurs at shallow water along the coastlines and at larger lakes with open water.
Red-necked Grebe
I was watching two red-necked Grebes diving for food in the Bow River, they feed on fish, crustaceans, insects and few other aquatic related food items. They also ingest large quantities of their own feathers like the other grebes. Still no clear idea why they do that and why they feed their feathers to their young. It might be to protect the lower digestive tract from hard indigestible material. The morning I got this picture, I was just happy to get a good photo during a morning snow fall.
Until next moment,
Amar
