When it comes to diving for your dinner, there aren’t many birds in the UK that are as skilled or as adapted as the great crested grebe. They spend almost their entire lives either on or below the waters surface. To aid them in this sub aquatic life, great crested grebes have large webbed feet that splay almost sideways from the back of their bodies. Their tail is insignificant and their wings, which have a span of 23 to 29 inches, are almost always held close to their bodies... In fact, great crested grebes rarely take to the air and prefer to dive to safety if they can. They can grow to weigh up to 3.3lbs or 1.5kilos and have striking marking throughout the year. During the spring summer and autumn, adult birds develop a large crest of orange or chestnut feathers which can be held upright or hang down over the birds neck and head. They have white throats and grey backs and if you get a close enough view of them, they have blood red eyes. During the winter they lose their crests and develop a drabber grey colouring.
Their diet is made up completely of aquatic creatures, mainly small fish but they will also eat amphibians and invertebrates. They get all of this food from under the water and are capable of diving for up to 39 seconds and usually go to depths of 10 to 12 foot deep.
Great crested grebes are found across most of Europe, some of central and eastern asia, Australia and parts of east and south Africa. In a lot of their Asian and eastern European range they migrate away for the winter but in central and western Europe they are mostly resident all year round. Their habitat is usually deep, clear bodies of water but they can also eek out a living in most other wetland habitats, canals, rivers and in coastal estuaries.
One of the great crested grebes most famed behaviours is their courtship ritual dance. This is performed by both the male and female from as early as January when each pair will begin to claim a territory. The dance involves lots of mirrored swimming and head flicking with both birds diving down and collecting stones or pond weed to present to eachother as the dance culminates with them rising up out of the water in a chest to chest display.
#birds #nature #wildlife

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