Psilos Bird Journal
Monday August 20th 2007
     
"Seeking freedom "
 
     
Today there is a little more sun and the lodge has become a beehive of activity. The juvenile terns are all on the raft. There are four in total. Three on the nearest raft and one on the raft at the other side of the lodge. They have all fledged but seem reluctant to fly. This time I make my way straight to the spit in the hope that I may get close to the juveniles yet again. My luck may not be in though as the adults are busy feeding and are keeping close.
     
juvenile grebe
     
Whilst I keep an eye on the terns I also watch the grebes. There are two pairs of great crested grebes with chicks. One pair stay firmly over the other side of the lodge (header photo above) and never come close but the other pair are much more accomodating. The chick, though large is still being fed regularly and the adults are busy fishing. For a good half hour one of the adults is fishing very close by me and eventually comes up with a very large fish.


     
This is where my luck is in. The adult has the fish and the chick is also close by. With eyes firmly on his meal ahead the chick comes closer.

This is a very large fish and is going to take some swallowing. Turning the fish so that it goes down head first the juvenile makes his first attempt at swallowing it. He didnt get very far and after three attempts I was beginning to think the chick was beat. For alittle while the juvenile played with the fish stabbing it with his beak until the adult got tired and took the fish from him. Outraged that his prize had been snatched the juvenile renewed his vigour and took up the challenge once again. In the end it took at least a dozen attempts to get the fish down. How they do not choke I will never know but I doubt he went hungry for a while.

 
 
After the fish had been swallowed the adult turned towards me and stretched. it was almost as if he was bragging about the size of fish he had caught!