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| The pied-billed grebe chicks are still staying close to the nest, and to mama, at Blue Heron Lake. |
You hear them before you see them. The tell-tale high-pitched cheeping of the grebe chicks, that is. I'm glad they're no longer hanging out in their nests. The nest they were born in is virtually invisible from shore, now that the willow has thoroughly leafed out. In fact, I wonder if leaf intrusion is why the grebes built a second nest closer to the edge of the willow's drip line.
I arrived at the lake at around 10:30, earlier than usual, and the blue heron nests in front of the boat house were noisy with begging nestlings. Usually all is quiet when I arrive, and for a while I've been wondering if the nestlings had fledged. I was probably a little too late for the actual feeding time, as I soon watched several herons fly out of the nests, heading southwest. I wondered whether they were all adults, or if some were fledglings following along to be shown how to hunt.
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| Testing the Wings on the Boat House Island |
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| One of the grebelets was more aggressively begging than its sibling. |
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| It tried to induce feeding a few times, to no avail. |
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| I suspect this is the same nestling spreading its wings as the one who was showing off the last time I photographed this nest east of Strawberry Hill. |
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| Speed Goose |
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| Water Off A Goose's Back |
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| The great blue herons aren't the only big nestlings yet to fledge. (The black oystercatchers at Seal Rocks are still sitting on eggs, by the way.) |
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| Incoming! |
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