Abby Tekiela, Author at Nature Smart

The American Bison (Bison bison) is one of those animals that doesn’t seem to get the admiration or respect that other large animals command. Brown Bears, Moose, and Elk are adored by the masses. White-tailed Deer are prized, and Black Bears are respected, and yet it seems the Bison is just tolerated, kind of like you might tolerate your strange uncle that comes to a family gathering.

Bison are the national mammal of America, and it seems rather fitting. The Bison has a significant historical, cultural, and ecological importance and does a great job at representing the strength of America. This critter has gone from being one of the most numerous animals in America in pre-settlement times, to being at the brink of extinction, and is now rebounding. It has an important conservation success story to tell and a good lesson to learn.

The American Bison is the largest land mammal in North America. This was painfully obvious to me while I was recently filming and taking pictures of some Bison in Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. The males were rutting and tending very closely to some females. Looking through my camera lens brings the animal up close and personal and really drives home the fact that the males are absolutely huge.

An adult male can stand over 6 feet tall at the shoulder and is 10 to 11 feet in length. Females and young males are much smaller, but an adult male can weigh over 2,000 pounds (one ton). The record heaviest bison weighed over 3,800 pounds. Despite their massive size, they are super-fast and can even outrun a horse, reaching 35 mph and jumping over six feet high. This is definitely not an animal to trifle with. I was following one particular large bull when I noticed he wanted to cross a road. The sides of the highway had the standard metal guard rail, which is only about 3 feet tall, but this bull didn’t even break stride and cleared the rail in one clean jump and kept going.

Bison are considered ecosystem engineers, similar to the Prairie Dog that I wrote about last time. The bison don’t just graze; they shape the environment around the areas where they roam. Moving around the Bison encourages a wide variety of plants to grow by grazing for a short time before moving onto another area.

They are one of the few species where both the males and females have horns. Just a reminder, horns are different from antlers. Horns are permanent structures on the animal’s head and are composed of keratin, compared to antlers, which are made mostly of calcium and are regrown each year.

I was out filming a herd of Bison, which contained several very large males, all of who were rutting. During the breeding season, the males go around and check in with females. They smell the female to determine if she is near the optimal time to be bred. As the males wander around, they sound off with a deep and resounding bellow. These bellows are very loud and sound like a cross between a lion’s roar and a Black Bear’s growl. The low wave frequency of the bellows travels well across the open ground. I happen to notice the sides of the Bison vibrating with each bellowing call, just where the ribs are located, so much that the dirt and dust in the male’s fur vibrated right out into the air. It was a truly impressive sight to see and something I would never have known about or understood if I wasn’t spending so much time observing and filming.

We should celebrate our American Bison because it’s truly a unique American animal. By the way, I hope you noticed that I never called them Buffalo. This is because they are not a type of Buffalo. Also, Saturday, November 1^st, is National Bison Day and Awareness Day. This day of celebration is the first Saturday in November each year. Until next time…

Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at naturesmart.com.

Diversity is the key to the strength and resilience of Mother Nature. Diversity in the plant world ranges from single-celled plants, known as algae, to giant sequoia trees. The diversity of insects is almost too much to even fathom. Birds are wonderful examples of the diversity of nature. Over 11,000 different species of birds flit around the world in so many vibrant colors, shapes, and sizes.

The mammals of the world are no exception to the marvels of diversity. Over 6,600 distinct species of mammals add to the diversity of Mother Nature. There are mammals that swim in the deepest oceans, live underground, in the deserts, forests, and wetlands. We even have mammals that fly.

Each one of these species plays an important role in the health and diversity of our natural world. You can think of each and every species of plant, insect, fungi, bird, or mammal as an individual rivet on an airplane. This metaphor was first developed by Paul Ehrlich and is known as the Rivet Popper metaphor. The metaphor is used to explain the importance of biodiversity and the consequences of species extinction on the stability of our ecosystems. Thousands of rivets hold the plane together, just as thousands of species hold our ecosystems together. Some rivets are more vital than others to the plane’s ability to fly. If you lose a couple of rivets, the plane can continue to fly, but at what point and how many rivets are too many and cause the plane to crash? Depending upon where on the plane a rivet is lost will determine the viability of the plane. The important ones are considered keystone species.

The Rivet Popper illustrates that while the extinction of one species might not cause the plane to crash, the cumulative loss of biodiversity, especially the loss of a keystone species, increases the chances of the eventual collapse of the ecosystem, or the plane to crash.

Keystone species are so important to a given ecosystem. Often these keystone species are small, unnoticed, and seemingly unimportant. Some people may even question, “What good are they?”. The Black-tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) is one of these species that plays an integral part in the grassland ecosystem. I was thinking about this last week while capturing some images and video of these marvelous creatures while photographing in western North Dakota.

Prairie Dogs are “ecosystem engineers” of the grassland habitat. The list of benefits of their existence will be too much to include in this column, but let me highlight a few. Dozens of other species literally depend upon prairie dogs. The complex burrows that the dogs dig create homes for many other species, such as Burrowing Owls and the endangered Black-footed Ferret. Other critters, such as snakes, beetles, mice, voles, and others, also use their burrows.

Their digging also improves the soil health by aerating the soil, turning over the soil to recycle nutrients and helping rainwater recharge the aquifers, and preventing flooding and excess runoff. Their constant grazing on the vegetation that surrounds the prairie dog towns promotes new growth that benefits other grazers such as Bison and Pronghorn.

Dozens of other animals depend upon Prairie Dogs for food. Predators such as hawks, eagles, foxes, and coyotes often depend upon Prairie Dogs for food. The American Badger and Black-footed Ferrets almost exclusively feed on Prairie Dogs. Bobcats and Swift Foxes spend a lot of time hunting them also.

The diversity of life surrounding a Prairie Dog town is undeniable. Outside the Prairie Dog town, you just don’t see the wide variety of plants and animals, especially the predators. A healthy Prairie Dog town is the heart and soul of a healthy and productive ecosystem. Every time I visit a Prairie Dog town, I am reminded of just how important diversity is for a healthy environment. Until next time…

Bird migration is still one of nature’s most interesting and yet mysterious events. On the surface, migration seems rather simple and straight-forward, but if you stop and take a detailed look, you will see every shade of complexity possible.

There are over 11,000 species of birds, and about 40 percent partake in some form of migration. Migrations range from simple elevational changes for species that live in the mountains, to short, distant movements to avoid unfavorable weather, to long, distant trips to warm climates to escape winter, to the granddaddy of them all, migration from one end of the earth to the other. Right away, you can see there is more to migration than perhaps you thought.

In the 1800’s we didn’t understand much about migration. We thought it was impossible for a tiny bird to navigate over great distances and endure huge physical demands, so we said it was impossible and we “made up facts” such as hummingbirds had to migrate on the backs of geese, in order for them to escape winter. We also said that some birds dove down to the bottom of ponds and overwintered in the mud for the winter. The thoughts of these kinds of theories now seem preposterous and outlandish. Yet at the time, it was accepted as fact because someone didn’t understand, so they made up something that could explain the unexplainable.

In the 1900s, we started to develop new ways to study birds. Some of the earliest attempts to track migration involved catching a bird and tying a brightly colored ribbon on their wing in hopes of being able to find this bird again during winter. This wasn’t very efficient, and you had to have an idea where they stayed for the winter already to make this work.

When transistors were invented in the 1940s, it was the breakthrough that made small electronics possible, and by the end of the 1900s, small tracking devices were used to track the migration of free-flying birds. This was the beginning of our better understanding of bird migration, but just the tip of the migration iceberg.

In just the past few decades, so much new and almost unbelievable information about bird migration has completely turned our understanding of migration upside down. Today, there are many ways to track migrating birds. One of these migration tracking tools is a website called Bird Cast from Cornell Lab. All you need to do is put in your county and state, and each day during the migration season, you can see how many birds passed over your county on the previous night.

There is a ton of information available to anyone who is curious about what is going on with migration. In addition to the tally of the birds migrating through your county, there is also information about what time they migrated, the timing of each nightly flight, along with flight direction and altitude. They also have a list of the expected species that are migrating.

For example, as I write this, 97,400 birds passed over my county last night, and at one given moment last night, 36,400 birds were in flight, traveling SSW at 14 mph, at an altitude of 600 feet, all at one time. In order to gather all this data, Bird Cast uses data from the national network of weather surveillance radars (NEXRAD). Sophisticated algorithms and machine learning models are applied to the radar data to separate weather, such as precipitation, from biological signals (the birds). It then analyzes the strength of the radar signals to estimate the number of birds that are flying. Just like the weather, they are able to give migration forecasts to predict the nocturnal bird migration for the next few nights.

We sure have come a long way in the understanding of bird migration, unlocking some of the most mysterious natural events of nature. However, no doubt there is so much more we don’t understand about bird migration, and we will understand more in the years to come. Until next time…

I really enjoy these late summer evenings and nights. But not for the warmth but rather for the sounds that fill the night air. I am not sure if you have noticed, but the sounds you can hear outside at night cannot be heard at any other time of year. The spring and summer months have a nice, pleasant sound from the few insects that are calling, but it doesn’t even come close to the soothing sounds of late summer.

The sounds of late summer kind of creep up on us without us noticing. Each evening, a few more insect species join the orchestra of evening sounds. To understand why the night sounds are so loud, you need to understand the life cycle of many of our insects. In the northern states, most insects will spend the winter as an egg. With the warmth of spring, the insect eggs start to hatch. Most insects go through several different life stages as they develop into reproductive adults. For example, it may take 2 weeks for the eggs to hatch into a larva form. The larva form, or worm-like stage, can take another 4 weeks or longer.

Then they go into the metamorphosis stage, where the insect rests for a week or two before emerging as the adult form of the insect. It is the adult form that is able to sexually reproduce. This often involves the males singing or calling for females, and it took most of the summer to get to this stage of life. So, what you hear outside at night are the adults calling to attract mates so they can lay eggs that will survive until next spring. And it took all spring and summer to get to this point.

One of these night-time songsters is the Conehead Katydid. They are a group of large, green insects that all look and sound similar. They are easily recognized by the unique cone-shaped foreheads, extremely long antennae, and very long angular legs. The cone-shaped head really gives them a distinctive look. No one knows why the head is uniquely shaped or what function it performs. But as soon as you see one of these insects, you will notice the cone-shaped head.

Most of these katydids are two to three inches long, which makes them one of the larger insects. They are bright green in color, which allows them to blend into their environment. Some species of Coneheads are brown. As you might imagine, a large, juicy insect like this would be a good meal for many other critters. In fact, the Conehead Katydids are a favorite insect for parasitic wasps. The adult wasps capture and sting the katydid to paralyze it. The wasp flies back to its underground chambers, where it leaves the helpless katydid as a fresh meal when the wasp eggs hatch and need to eat.

Coneheads have large, powerful jaws that they use to eat both other insects and fruit and seeds. They are fastidious cleaners, using their mouths to clean their feet all the time. They have extremely long antennae, which are sometimes longer than the body. The females have long, straw-like appendages coming out of their abdomen. This is called the ovipositor and is used to deposit eggs into plant tissue or into the ground.

They are found in weedy fields, native prairies, wetlands, and along forest edges. They can be very common in rural and suburban areas.

It is the male that is the songster. In fact, this is how they received their name from the sound produced by rubbing their wings together. They rub the sharp edge of one wing over the file-like ridge on the other wing to produce a sound like “katy-did-katy-did, katy-didn’t”.

Combine hundreds of these calls along with a myriad of other insects, and you have the wonderful sounds of the late summer nights. Until next time…

The common names for many species of birds can sometimes be confusing, contradictory, misleading, or a complete mystery. For example, the common name Red-winged Blackbird has always gotten under my skin, because the wing of this bird isn’t red; it is actually black. It is the shoulder that is red, not the wing, so we should rename this bird as the Red-shoulder, Black-winged Blackbird.

The Common Loon is another bird with a confusing name. What does the word “loon” mean? Turns out the name is thought to be derived from the Scandinavian word “lom” which refers to someone being clumsy or lame. This describes how this bird clumsily moves on land because its legs and feet are located so far back on its body.

No doubt you have heard of a group of birds called swallows. Where does the word “Swallow” come from? No one knows for sure, but perhaps it comes from the Old English word “swealwe” which means to ingest food and could refer to these birds eating while flying. Or it could be related to the Old English word “swell” referring to an erratic flight, which perfectly describes this bird’s flight pattern. I guess its origin of the common name is lost to history.

All of this was running through my head on my recent photo tour of the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador. One of the most common birds found on this island archipelago is the Blue-footed Booby. Not only is there a Blue-footed Booby, but there is also a Red-footed Booby and a NezcaBooby. Three species of booby live in the Galapagos Islands. So where did the name booby come from? The name comes from the Spanish word “bobo”, which translates to foolish or clownish.

The reference to clown-like comes from these birds’ clumsily walking on land. When they walk, they lift their large blue feet high and slowly and deliberately place their foot, one in front of the other. It looks like the large shoes of a clown walking. These birds also have absolutely no fear of humans and walk around with their oversized clown-like blue feet without hesitation. It seems like these birds have a foolish nature, hence their common name.

Turns out there are six recognized species of boobies. They all belong to the genus Sula, and three of them are very common in the Galapagos Islands. So, the name Blue-footed seems obvious enough. But you have to ask yourself, why would a bird have blue feet? The blue color of the Blue-footed Booby’s feet comes from blue pigment that is derived from their diet of fish. The pigments act as antioxidants and build up in the birds’ feet, giving them their distinctive blue color. It is believed that the bluer the bird’s feet, the better the diet, and a bird with a better diet is healthier than other birds. So, the blue feet actually indicate an individual’s fitness and ability to reproduce. The bluer the healthier.

All of these birds’ kooky looks and foolish behavior are set aside when the boobies are flying and hunting for fish. Their large, strong wings carry them quickly above the ocean’s surface. They spot fish in the water below and dive headfirst into the water at a high rate of speed. They hit the water with such force that they often reach three to five feet into the water, snatching up a fish before bobbing back to the surface. They quickly take flight and repeat this over and over until they have caught enough fish.

So, no matter how silly or goofy a bird’s common name may be, there seems to always be a reason for or reference to the bird’s biology. It’s just one more thing I like about the natural world of birds. Until next time…

I think it would be safe to say that most people are aware of turtles and tortoises. But at the same time, I think there is a lot of confusion surrounding these cool critters. Even those familiar with these reptiles can sometimes have questions about the differences between turtles and tortoises.

Recently, while leading a photo tour to the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, I had a chance to show my group the difference between turtles and tortoises. The Galapagos Tortoise (Chelonoidis niger) is a huge reptile species that is one of three species native to South America. The Galapagos Tortoise is the largest living species of all tortoises.

We spent 8 days living on a large ship that sailed between many of the Galapagos Islands. One day, we went ashore on Santa Cruz Island in hopes that we might find and photograph the giant tortoises. On our way to the Charles Darwin Research Station, we stopped off at a lovely place that specialized in maintaining the native habitat just for the tortoises.

Driving down a red dirt road, we came across our first tortoise. It was slowly walking down the road. It was so large that it took up most of the road, and we were unable to pass by it in our vehicle. We all got out and approached the tortoise. Nothing prepares you for how massive these animals become.

Males tend to be larger than females. A large mature male can weigh upwards of 800 pounds and measure six feet long. They stand around three feet tall. On average, males are around 400-600 pounds, while females run around 300-500 pounds. What is even more impressive is, they obtain this size with an herbivorous diet consisting of cacti, grass, green leaves, lichens, and fruits of many tropical trees such as oranges.

Their huge size allows them to build up both fat (food) and water to last them six or seven months without eating or drinking. It is thought that these reserves are what allowed them to move from the mainland of South America to these remote islands, which are over 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador in South America.

The primary difference between tortoises and turtles are in their habitat and some basic physical parts. Tortoises are primarily land-dwelling animals. They have large, thick legs and stumpy feet, which are perfect for walking on land. Turtles are aquatic and have feet that are thin and flipper-like that helps propel them through the water. Tortoises tend to live much longer than turtles. Tortoises also have high-domed shells. Turtles have flatter, more hydrodynamic-shaped shells.

The Galapagos Tortoises often live over 100 years, making them one of the longest living vertebrates on the planet. In captivity, they have lived for over 175 years. The Galapagos Islands are near the equator, which means they don’t have winter in the traditional sense. They have a wet season and a dry season. This allows the tortoises to be active all year long. Plants on the islands stay green all year, providing them with constant food sources. Their mouth is more like a bird’s beak, with sharp edges which allows them to eat the flesh of cacti without any issues.

All together, we found and photographed over a dozen mature Galapagos Tortoises, which was a thrill of a lifetime for me. Seeing and getting a chance to capture some images of these creatures was something I won’t forget for a long time. Until next time…

The middle of summer is a great time to see some very cool critters. The long summer evenings bring out so many interesting insects that we don’t find any other time of year. I was thinking about this last night, just before sunset while I was looking into my backyard and watching hundreds of Fireflies or Lightning Bugs blinking in the air of the warm summer evening.

The Firefly is a soft bodied beetle which possesses the remarkable ability to emit light through their body. Fireflies are found in temperate and tropical regions around the world. Although many countries no longer have fireflies. Here in America, they are found in damp forests, wet meadows and other protected areas that have leaf litter covering the ground.

The Fireflies we see at this time of year are a result of adults mating and laying eggs last year. After mating, the female lays her eggs either on or just below the surface of the earth. A nice layer of dried tree leaves helps maintain the moisture needed for the eggs to survive. The eggs hatch in two to three weeks, and a small larva (tiny worm) emerges. The larva feeds until the end of summer before digging deeper into the soil to overwinter.

In spring the larvae emerge, feeding heavily on snails and slugs for a couple weeks. The larva then pupates (life stage of an insect where it transforms into the adult) for one to two weeks and by the dog days of summer, and emerge as the adult beetle. There are more than 2,000 different types or kinds of light-emitting beetles in the world, and each species is slightly different in their lifecycle, light-emitting, and what the adult beetle looks like. Despite their big bright light, our Fireflies are tiny little insects, less than a half inch long.

The light production is a chemical process called bioluminescence. It occurs in a specialized organ where an enzyme luciferase acts on luciferin and oxygen and produces light. The oxygen is supplied via the breathing tubes along the abdomen of the beetle’s body. The light they produce is a cold light, no heat energy is produced, making it one of the most efficient light sources. The light has no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies. The light is usually a yellowish color. Different species of Fireflies produce green or pale red colors.

So why do these beetles emit light? Adult beetles emit light for mate selection. In our local Fireflies, both the male and female will blink their bright yellow light on and off. Males are flying around, blinking their light on and off, while the female is on the ground also blinking. This is how they find each other and tell the difference between males and females in the dim light of the evening.

Last night when I was out, I saw a female on the ground (female are slightly larger) and a male was flying nearby. He saw the light and landed within an inch of her. They continued to blink their light on and off. He walked over to her and circled her. I can only assume he is figuring out the lay of the land. When he figured it out, he quickly mounted her, so they were both facing the same direction. This brief encounter will fertilize her eggs, and he flies off to continue blinking and looking for other females. The female goes off to lay her eggs and will die, thus completing the lifecycle of the Firefly.

What I find absolutely fascinating about the Fireflies are, there are fossilized Fireflies dating back 99 million years. This is well back in the dinosaur era. So, when I look out my window and see the flashing of the Fireflies, it feels like I am looking back at ancient times and at the same time looking back at my own youth enjoying a warm summer evening. A childhood without experiencing fireflies in summer is a wasted childhood. Until next time…

I shouldn’t be, but I always am surprised when I point out a very common animal and people say they never heard of it. This happened several times this spring while running my Common Loon photo workshops. I had a family of Woodchuck, a mother and five young, living on my property, and just about everyone taking the photo tours asked “what is that?”

The Woodchuck, also known as a Groundhog (Marmota monax), is a large marmot member in the squirrel family (Sciuridae). They are closely related to Marmots, which are commonly found in the western half of the United States. The Woodchuck is found in the eastern half of the country, into Canada, reaching into Alaska. Unlike the Marmots of the west, which are high elevation creatures, the Woodchuck are found in low elevations, typically in forested regions.

The etymology of their name is completely unrelated to wood or chucking. It comes from the Algonquian name for the animal “wuchak”. They are also sometimes called Whistle-pig, or Ground Pig. Both of these names come from the overall chubby appearance of these animals. They are a type or kind of “ground squirrel”.

Woodchucks are considered the most solitary of the marmot species. They are crucial habitat engineers, which means the burrows they dig improve the soil health. They are very intelligent critters, often forming complex social networks and lasting relationships with their young. They have complex communication skills, have well defined social behaviors and work cooperatively when doing things such as digging burrows. They have excellent hearing and eyesight, contrary to what a lot of people think.

Male Woodchucks are larger than females. An adult male weighs around 6 to 8 pounds while females are around 5 to 7 pounds. Both males and females put on a considerable amount of extra weight by the end of summer. Typically, three to four extra pounds. This is extremely important because they are true hibernators. This means once they go down for hibernation in the fall, they don’t wake up until spring. If they don’t have enough body fat, or fuel, they can run out of energy before spring and will die during hibernation.

They put on all this weight on a vegetarian diet. They eat only plants, including berries, but Dandelions are at the top of their preferred food list. An adult can eat around 1 pound of vegetation per day, and in the spring, most of that are dandelions. This is great news for anyone who doesn’t like dandelions growing in their yard.

Woodchucks excavate burrows underground with multiple chambers. Some chambers are for sleeping, one for a nursery, one for waste, and another for hibernation. The length of the burrow isn’t very long, only about 6 to 10 feet, but one of the longest was 24 feet long. Often, people mistakenly believe that their burrows will undermine a foundation. According to the Humane Society of the United States, you would need to have a lot of Woodchucks all burrowing at the same time, and same place, over a very long time to cause any significant damage. Abandoned burrows benefit many other species by providing shelter for rabbits, raccoons, skunks, otters, chipmunks and many more in addition to helping to turn over the soils. Based on my own experience with a mother Woodchuck and 5 young, over a 2 month period, they were adorable neighbors who only brought joy and life to my yard. Until next time…

When you think of wildlife photography, you often think of spending hours in the woods, sitting in one place, watching and observing and capturing the perfect moment of time of a critter. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Most wildlife images you see are well planned out, and researched. Many times, it takes hours of preparation, researching where a species exists in populations large enough to increase the chances of seeing one, going during the season they are most active, driving to get to these locations, knowing your camera gear well enough to capture the images you have in your mind. And the list goes on and on.

I was thinking about this the other evening when I was standing in a cemetery in the dark, hoping to get lucky enough to capture an image of a nocturnal bird. All of my research brought me to this location, on this particular evening for a very special bird, the Eastern Whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus).

The Whip-poor-will, is a medium size bird in the nightjar family. I know, right now you are thinking, what the heck is a nightjar family. This family of birds that are all similar looking, are nocturnal, hunt insects on the wing (while flying), have large eyes, and an exceptional largemouth opening called a gap. You might be familiar with the Night-hawk which is also in the same family.

Whip-poor-wills are well camouflaged with brown feathers with white spots. This allows them to blend into their environment. They sleep during the day but when the sun goes down, they wake up to hunt for night flying insects. In spring the males give a whistle-like loud and repetitive call. They start calling when the sun goes down and call for several hours in a row. The call sounds like it is saying its name, whip-poor-will. Its name is onomatopoeically and it’s how this bird got its name. Many people have heard their calls, but few ever get to see this bird.

I know right now many of you reading this are thinking to yourself, I used to hear this bird when you were young. Or maybe some of you are lucky enough to still hear this bird. The Eastern Whip-poor-will has been declining in population. Since the 1970’s the Whip-poor-will has over a 60 percent decline in population. This is a massive decline across its range. The reason for the decline is multi-fold. Loss of forest habitat, fire suppression which changes the forest landscape, predation from feral cats and dogs, and the worst one is poisoning by insecticides. Widespread use of insecticides bioaccumulates in the birds causing death.

Whip-poor-wills nest on the ground. Females usually choose a shady spot with lots of leaves covering the ground. Females lay only 2 eggs and incubate for 19-21 days. She relies on her camouflage coloring to be undetected. Both parents help with incubation and help feed the young when they hatch. Some studies show that Whip-poor-wills synchronize nesting with the phases of the moon. As a result, the chicks hatch about 10 days before the next full moon.

When I was a child back in the 1960s, my family watched the Walt Disney program on Sunday evenings, like most families. It was one of the few TV programs that the entire family could watch together. I remember watching a particular show called Waterbirds, a 1952 short documentary film about several bird species that live in water. It featured a few minutes of Western Grebes (Aechmophorus occidentalis) performing mating displays set to classical music. I remember being shocked and amazed at this natural display. There is no doubt that these early experiences shaped my interest in nature.

Fast forward 50-plus years, and I was leading a photo workshop/tour to see, learn about, and capture some images of this very bird, the Western Grebe. With the memory of this TV show in my head, we set out to capture images of the “rushing” behavior of the Western Grebe.

The Western Grebe is the largest of the Grebes in North America. It is just over 2 feet long, with a long, thin neck and a long dagger-like bill. They have deep red eyes that stand out against their black cap on their head. They are a true waterbird, spending most of their lives either on or underwater. They are very fast swimmers underwater, which allows them to overtake and capture small fish, which is their main diet. Most of the time, they swallow the fish while still underwater. I don’t know the last time you tried eating something underwater, but I find this adaptation amazing.

The Western Grebe is a colony-nesting bird. This means large flocks, often in the hundreds, gather in appropriate habitat and nest together. Nesting habitat is usually large stands of cattail or bullrush vegetation. They make floating nests/mats out of last year’s vegetation. Both the male and female help construct the nest. Females lay 4 eggs, which she incubates.

But the images we were trying to capture were the elaborate courtship behaviors of the Western Grebe. Other species of grebe don’t display such complex courtship behaviors, so we were excited. Western Grebes are very vocal birds, giving a loud, raspy call that can be heard from a long distance. A male grebe returning to the nesting colony after fishing out in the deep water of the lake gives a loud call. This call is often answered by another male who is already in the colony.

The calling male birds swim towards each other, repeating their calls. As they approach each other, one dips their bill into the water and then flicks their head, spraying a small stream of water droplets to the side. This is just the start of the display. The two birds face off just a foot or so apart from each other, lowering their heads to the water’s surface. They continue to dip their bills in the water and then flick water to the sides. This lasts for a few seconds before they both jump up, mostly out of the water, and they start to run on the surface of the water. This is called rushing. The two, or sometimes more, will run on the surface of the water, with their heads held high and their wings slightly open. Their large yellow feet can be seen slapping the surface of the water. Sometimes the rush goes just a few yards, while others last for 50 yards or more. Either way, there is a lot of splashing going on. At the end of the rush, each bird dives forward, headfirst into the water, completely submerged.

During the three-day photo workshop, we witnessed and photographed about 30 rushes. Each and every one was thrilling to see and photograph. Until next time…