The Life AquaticBelgian photographer David Pattyn has been photographing waterbirds for years, with a particular attraction towards grebes.As birds that rarely fly, and hardly ever step foot on land, photographing grebes means getting in the water with them. Pattyn’s rare and intimate photographs reveal their private world as they see it, at water level.

- ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS BY DAVID PATTYN / NATUREPL.COM -

Grebes are specialised diving birds that spend virtually their whole lives on water. Their large feet are set well back on their bodies, making them efficient swim-mers but very clumsy on land, with the result that they very rarely leave the water. They build floating nests out of reeds and waterweeds and find all their food (insects, amphibians, crustaceans and fish) in or on the water.The prevailing threats to grebes this century have been habitat loss, such as the conversion of wetland habitat to agricultural land and the realloca-tion of water for other uses. Additionally, grebes are threatened by water pollution, alterations to water levels and the increase in recreational water-based activities. Some populations may also be affected by oil pol-lution and gill-net fishing.

Most grebes have elaborate breeding plu-mage and ritualised courtship displays. Some display blood-red eyes and crests or ear tufts, almost looking like they come from another world.

[Above]: The great crested grebe is one spe-cies that is commonly drowned accidentally in monofilament gill-nets.

tion for the hats and undergarments of upper class ladies. By 1860, they had been hunted almost to the point of exinction, with barely 50 breeding pairs remaining. A timely hun-ting ban reversed their fortunes, and great crested grebe numbers have continued to increase across Europe in the second half of the 20th century, patly due to eutrophication (water pollution) from agricultural fertilisers. When this occurs, the oversupply of nutrients induces an explosive growth in plants, algae,

and cyprinid fish such as minnows, which benefit from the increased water productivity. This in turn profits the grebes, and they are sometimes found in sewage farms or strongly polluted lakes near garbage dumps. However, once eutrophication reaches a certain stage, the fish populations become irregular, resul-ting in breeding failure among grebes, or po-pulation shifts. Because of these relationships, counts of great crested grebes are reliable indi-cators of water quality in agricultural regions.

The great crested grebe (Podiceps cristatus) is the largest and most widely distributed grebe in Europe, absent as a breeding bird only from Iceland and other northern latitudes. The spe-cies’ global range is vast, also stretching across central and southern Asia, with scattered co-lonies in Africa and Australasia. The global

Great Crested Grebepopulation of great crested grebes may num-ber more than a million birds, although the migratory behaviour of the species makes it difficult to calculate a reliable figure.In 19th century Europe, the ornate black and chestnut head plumes of the great crested grebe became a much-sought-after decora-

Great crested grebes are adaptabile to both fresh and brackish water. They prefer fairly open lakes with reed-fringed bays, but are equally at home in swamps, estuaries, reser-voirs, fish ponds, and flooded gravel pits. They require a plentiful supply of aquatic plants so they can build nesting platforms in the middle of the water. Alternatively, they may choose to nest among reed beds or floo-ded thickets close to the water’s edge.

At the beginning of the breeding season, when hormones are raging, great crested grebes are a force to be reckoned with. As adults, males and females are not easily distinguished. Wat-ching two grebes float purposefully towards eachother, it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between a courting couple and two rival males intent on attacking one another. In both situations, the head is kept low over the water, the crest erected. Once the birds meet,

their agenda becomes clear. Either they will begin courtship, or it will all end in a fight, as shown here. Fighting usually breaks out over territorial disputes for the most favourable mating spots, and the battles can be ferocious, with rival males attempting to stab their op-ponent with their beaks. Even after mating pairs have formed, the fi-ghting continues, with both sexes working as a team to fend off competitors or intruders.

Male in threat posture as it approaches a rival

Great crested grebes are well-known for their elaborate courtship displays. Mild displays are performed regularly to reinforce the bond between mating pairs, but when desire esca-lates into action, it leads to one of the most spectacular displays in the avian world.One of the birds dives, approaching the other almost unseen, and re-emerges within the personal space of its potential mate, rearing up with its neck arched down, declaring its amorous intentions.The displaying bird may be rebuffed and chased away, losing a few feathers in the pro-cess. But if the second bird is receptive to its advances, it will reply by half-spreading its wings and extending its cheek frills [1]. The birds have now made a partnership, and they’re ready to dance.Facing eachother, the male and female syn-chronise their movements in a graceful water ballet [2]. They bow their heads [3] and shake them from side to side [4], in a kind of tango that leads to the climax of their dance.The birds dive together, resurfacing with wa-terweed in their bills. Rushing towards eacho-ther, they meet breast to breast [5], rearing up out of the water and paddling their feet to maintain their balance. They may remain like this for some time, showing off their wate-rweed with sideways shakes of their heads [6].

[1] [2] [4]

[5]

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All the elegant courtship displays are, of course, pre-paration for the ultimate goal: mating. First, the male and female gather together aquatic plant material to create a mating platform. Often, this is the place where they will later make their nest but not always. I have seen some mating sites that have been used by many different pairs. Once the mating site is ready and all neces-sary dances have been performed, the fe-male will invite the male to mate. She will lay in a flat position on the mating spot and call the male, who jumps on top of her, while calling. After mating, he will jump onto her head and dance on top of her. Often, the female completely disap-pears under the water during this process, only to emerge again and mimick the male’s head movements.

Females lay between 1 - 9 eggs, with 4 eggs being the average clutch size. The male and fe-male take it in turns to sit, incubating the eggs for 27-29 days. Young grebes are delightfully zebra-striped, capable of swimming and diving almost as soon as they hatch. However, for the first 3-4 weeks they are carried around on the back of one parent, while the other brings them food. Parent grebes assist the young to climb aboard by placing a foot on the surface of the water. Parent grebes teach their chicks to swim by di-ving beneath the surface, leaving them floating on the surface. The adult then re-surfaces a few feet away, and the chicks swim over to them

and climb back on. The chicks grow rapidly, and before long the adullts begin dis-

couraging them from boarding by pushing them off and

manoeuvring quickly out of the way, forcing them to swim by themselves,

though they will continue to guard the chicks until they are fully fledged.

The chicks are fed a menu of insects and fish as they grow, but they are also fed feathers. At first, it was thought that this was some kind of protection against the spines of the fish they eat. However, in 2008, Dutch researchers sug-gested that feather eating, which enables the formation of pellets, could be a defence mechanism against parasites. By regurgtating the pellets once every two days, great crested grebes could be minimizing the chance of gastric parasites building up in the upper part of the alimentary tract.

Great crested grebe feeding a feather to its chick.

Great crested grebes have a very long bree-ding season, typically between April and Sep-tember in Europe. But they are ready to breed in any season if suitable conditions arise. In many parts of their range, they may raise two clutches of chicks per year. The first usually hatch in April, and the last in August-Septem-ber. Already, when the first brood are between 6 - 10 weeks old, parents might begin court-ship again, even though their chicks are not yet independent. If the two broods overlap, chicks from the first brood may assist in rai-sing the younger generation.

The chicks can feed themselves by the time they are 8 weeks old and are fully grown at eleven weeks. They lose their distinctive black and white markings, gaining the im-pressive plumage around their face and on top of their head, in preparation for attrac-ting mates.As adults, they will undergo a change at the end of each breeding season, replacing all their feathers, including their flight fea-thers, rendering them temporarily flightless. Some may disperse locally to large lakes and reservoirs for the moulting period, during which time gatherings of hundreds of indivi-duals may form. The process can make them vulnerable to the colder temperatures and they tend to dive less during moulting.As soon as the ice melts away at the end of winter, grebes can be found again in their breeding plumage. In countries with milder winters, like the Netherlands, that means breeding behaviour may be observed as early as January.

The Great-crested Grebe in winter plumage lacks the chestnut ruff and the head is simply black and white. The body plumage is duller and greyer.

Great crested grebes can fly at about 11 weeks of age and may cover considerable distances as they begin their independent lives. Flight is laboured at first, even in adults, and requires a long, pattering run across the water’s surface.The same behaviour sometimes forms an ele-ment of the courtship dance, as shown here.

The little grebe is found in a wide range of wetlands - normally in small ponds, canals and swamps, but also in sheltered parts of lar-ger lakes and reservoirs. It is rarely seen far from vegetation cover.Some populations are migratory, moving to the nearestvice-free waters, mainly in larger rivers and estuaries. Thevbreeding season is highly variable, and in some areas it may breed most of the year. High reproductive potentialcompensates for severe losses in cold winters or in dry years.

Little Grebe

I was very fortunate when a friend of mine contacted me to say he had discovered a nest of Little Grebes in his garden pond; a female brooding 5 eggs. He allowed me to place my floating hide in the pond, at the other side of where the female was nesting. 5 days later I received another call to say that four chicks had appeared (the fifth egg was unaccounted for). Despite it being a cold, rainy and very windy day, I entered the floating hide, but the grebes never left their nest in the reeds. So I waited until the weather improved and returned when the chicks were six days old.Even thoughI enteted the hide at 4:30am, the cold morning meant the chicks did not appear until 07:43. With the female leading, they approached my hide as if it was not there at all.

The chicks would often try to climb onto

their mother’s back but she only al-lowed them to ride once. The rest of the time, she would shake them off as she was working very hard to keep them fed with small worms and dra-gonfly larvae. There was never any sign of her mate.

7 days after the chicks hatched, I watched the female constantly diving for prey and coming back up with several different items: great di-ving beetles, dragonfly larvae, snails, worms and other aquatic creatures that I could not identify. To my astonishment, the female also caught several Smooth or Common Newts (Triturus vulgaris) and , after killing them, she tried to feed them to the chicks. As the newts were too big for the week-old babies, she eventually ate them herself.

[Left] Mother little grebe offers her chick an insect larva.

[Above] Chick attempting to swallow a large prey item.

[Below] Adult carrying a smooth newt.

To my surprise, at 10 days old, the chicks were clearly bigger than the last time I saw them. Two chicks had begun to explore the pond by themselves, trying to pick small in-sects or worms from reed stems. Meanwhile, their siblings were constantly following the female, begging for food. Again, she caught some common newts and, with some effort, the chicks were now able to swallow whole newts at a time - an unbelievable sight!

At 21 days, the chicks had grown enormously and were slowly approaching the size of the adult female, although they were still cove-red in down and you could see when they stretched their wings that they had no pri-mary (flight) feathers. I began to see a size dif-ference between them and I also noticed for the first time that the female was behaving aggressively towards the smallest chick, chasing it away each time it approached.At 28 days, all chicks left the nest without their mother and had learnt to dive. Occa-sionally, they would bob to the surface with something in their beaks, but nothing edible. Eventually the female emerged to feed them, though they continued to dive themselves.

Female with one of her 28 day chicks, both with vegetation on their backs after diving.

At 36 days, the smaller chick was nowhere to be seen, and neither was the mother. I was very worried about the 3 remaining chicks as I had never seen them catch any prey by themselves. They were now the same size as an adult Little Grebe, with most of the feathers in place and only small patches of down remaining, although their heads were still striped black and white. I left the pond wondering if they would survive.

At 41 days, the chicks were still alive and healthy, which meant they must have been eating well. I witnessed one of them catch an almost fully grown spadefoot toad larva (large prey for a bird of this size) and swal-low it whole! The others followed suit, and all three were picking insects off the emergent vegetation tooIt was fantastic to witness all three chicks feeding independently.

At 46 days, the chicks had fully developed fea-thers. One of them stretched its wings and I could clearly see the primary wing feathers. All fledglings were now catching prey with little effort, and it was a joy to watch them.I left the pond for the last time, wishing the Little Grebes success and feeling grateful for having had the opportunity to watch them grow.

Black-necked Grebe

The Black-necked grebe (Podiceps nigricollis) is the most abundant species of grebe in the world, with a global population estimated at 4 - 5 million individuals. It can be found on every continent except Australia and Antarc-tica; and in Europe, it has been expanding its range to the west. Black-necked grebes are real pioneers, quick to take advantage of tempora-ry or man-made bodies of water. In Western Europe the population fluctuates, depending on conditions in the east, such as droughts, which push the species westward.During the breeding season this species frequents permanent and temporary pools with lush vegetation, such as freshwater mar-shes and lakes, as well as ponds, sewage farms, quiet river backwaters and newly flooded areas. Outside of the breeding season it may also be found in reservoirs, coastal estuaries, and inshore bays and channels.

Black-necked grebes could well be the most beau-tiful species of grebe. Adults are unmistakable in summer, with a spray of golden feathers radiating across the cheek. In winter (see inset), they are white with a poorly defined black cap and grey neck and back. The striking red eye is present year-round.

Because of their specialisation on small prey, the bree-ding success of black-necked grebes depends on fairly clear water with underwater water-weed mea-dows, supporting high densities of invertebrates and their larvae.Some years ago, I visited La Dombes in France to photograph great crested grebes, but water levels were still very low at the pond I wanted to photograph and there were no fish. The pond, however, was overgrown with vegetation and full of all kinds of insect life. These were ideal conditions for black-necked grebes, which feed primarily on adult and larval insects (such as mosquitoes, aqua-tic bugs, beetles, damselflies, dragonflies and midges), although they do also take mol-luscs, crustaceans, tadpoles and small fish.

No other grebe is as sociable as the black-necked grebe. It breeds in colonies (which, in some areas of North America and Asia, may number in the thousands). Like other grebes, they participate in elaborate courtship dis-plays, turning towards eachother and mir-roring eachother’s movements. They move their heads from side to side, in between bouts of preening, to help them appear as attractive as possible.

Black-necked grebes breed between May and June in the northern hemis-

phere, although laying dates vary extensively between years and breeding sites.

During courtship, black-necked grebes might dive underwater, while their partner opens their wings and waits. The diver will then emerge in front of its partner and they will dance together in an upright position, sometimes running across the water paralell to eachother.

During the many hours I have spent photo-graphing black-necked grebes, I found found them to be less shy than little grebes, but still not as extrovert as great creasted grebes. They lie somewhere in the middle. Their courtship may not be as exuberant and wild as great crested grebes, but it is nevertheless of exceptional elegance and beauty.

As an opportunistic species, the black-nec-ked grebe can be unpredicatable in its pre-cise location. The shallow, highly vegetated lakes which it favours can form quickly; as a result of flooding, for example. Colonies of grebes may then form equally rapidly, only to disappear elsewhere next season.

A male black-necked grebe brings aquatic vegetation to his floating platform. This will be used for mating - and later, as a nest to incubate the eggs.

More than any other grebe, the Black-nec-ked will regularly feed without diving, dip-ping its head and neck into the shallows, or even skimming its bill over the water.

After courtship, the pair makes a kind of ma-ting platform. This might be used by seve-ral pairs, with different couples fighting for the right to mate. The dominant couple will mate first, while other birds watch and wait for their turn to mate on the same spot.

[Left] A breeding pair attempt to chase away an individual approa-ching their mating spot. Such disputes occur often, leading to a lot of failed mating attempts.

A successful mating atempt lasts about 15 mi-nutes, during which time the pair will copulate twice. Afterwards, dancing will resume again; first performed by the male on top of the female’s head, and then together.

Outside of the breeding season, the species moves to salt lakes, saline ponds and reser-voirs, or to coastal estuaries, bays and chan-nels, where they feed on brine shrimps and other invertebrates. After gathering at these ‘staging grounds’ they moult, becoming flightless for three to four months, due to loss of their flight feathers, and weight from their pectoral muscles.

Individual grebes may adopt different stra-tegies with regard to the timing of moult, and the same is true when they re-grow their breeding plumage. Here, an individual still in its winter plumage is chased away by a breeding pair.

When temperatures drop, grebes may rest close together for warmth and shelter from the rain.

These images were taking at night, while I waited for sunrise one morning. The lights reflected in the water are from streetlamps, adding a splash of colour to the scene.

Photographing black-necked grebes is not easy. I have to enter the water at the end of the night, while it is still completely dark, and wait there until first light. I wear several layers of wet suits and a dry suit to combat the cold. The slightest movement would alert the birds to my presence, so I have to stay absolutely still. If all goes according to plan, I am rewarded with a glimpse into the lives of these very private birds.

To make my images, I mostly use a floating hide. Floating hides have a lot of fexibility, mainly in choosing your background while photographing. Also, because of the low perspective, they allow for images with a more intimate feel.It is not always easy. The cold water and the risk of your equipment getting wet are just two of the risks, but when done well, one gets to see intimate behaviour seldom witnessed by other people. Once in the floating hide, patience is key. A lot of photographers will try to approach the birds once in a floating hide. My advice is to wait for the birds to come to you. Only then you will be able to photograph their natural behaviour.

[Above] Red necked grebes (Podiceps gri-segena) performing typical courtship dance whilst calling.

Red-necked Grebe

About the Photographer:

Belgian photographer David Pattyn lives in the Netherlands and is passionate about wildlife photography. He likes to photograph particular subjects over a long period of time, getting to know his subjects intimately in or-der to get better results. He focuses mainly on birds, mammals and landscapes but has a particular attraction to water birds.

David tries to combine his passion for photo-graphy with his family and his profession as an anaesthesiologist and likes to travel with his wife and their sons to watch and admire wildlife around the world.

David has won numerous awards in inter-national photo competitions including GDT European Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, Natures Best, AFPAN , Asferi-co, Memorial Maria Luisa and Glanzlichter.

timaldred@naturepl.com+44 (0)117 911 4675

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