Birds at Impington Lake

These images of an adult Great Crested Grebe feeding its young show what a challenging task it is catch and despatch a Signal Crayfish!   I don't know what happened to the crayfish, but during its demise, there were bits of flesh coming off it which were devoured by the fledged grebes.

It was fun to watch a Green Finch feeding off the blossom of either Hawthorn or May.

A couple of days I had seen a large flock of Long Tailed Tits.   Adults were feeding young, but when I was there with a camera there were few to be seen.   A moral there!

Clayhithe

Having not used the beginning of the year as an incentive to submit to this blog on a regular basis, nor my clocking up another year, I'll endeavour to use the start of the new Camera Club year as the prompt to get going yet again!

Why would four cruisers of the same colour and with the same coloured fenders moor one behind the other?!

The Great Crested Grebes didn't appear to have a nest or young but did look as though they might start a courtship dance.   They certainly seemed interested in one another.   The Chaffinch didn't seem to have found a comfortable perch, and the Sedge Warbler persisted in singing from behind a twig.   I shall include images shortly which deploy my new lens.

The Lake

A few weeks ago a pair of Great Crested Grebes raised three chicks. Today I went to see how they were getting on and was delighted to see there was an adult with one chick. At some distance I could see that the adult had caught a huge fish which it was having difficulty in swallowing. Eventually it was successful while the accompanying chick showed little interest in the fish.

One huge fish took a while to be swallowed.

Within the hour I saw an adult with two chicks! Although the chicks had a go at diving they were reliant on the adult for fish! A considerable noise accompanied the adult returning to the surface. When the adult had been successful in catching a fish, both chicks gave chase to the adult swimming away from them until the nearer chick got the food. There was no way of knowing whether the same chick was getting all the fish or whether the adult had a way of ensuring each had a feed.