Facts you should know about GREAT CRESTED GREBES!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ส.ค. 2024
- 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
Some of the footage and images used in this video were obtained using creative commons licences. The originals and their licence details can be found at:
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The Great Crested Grebe has to be one of our most exotic looking birds; I used to watch them ducking and diving on the River Ribble, when I lived up that way many moons ago. They are stunning to watch.
Lovely video beautiful looking birds, their eyes are so cool and different. Love their little dance too with their fluffy little heads. Thanks for this Liam
As always. Informative, easy to digest, most importantly delivered with a delight and enthusiasm for the subject and nature. Thankyou Liam.
Ace. Most informative, as ever.
Wonderful shots of a most majestic water bird.
beautiful video very interesting, thanks 👍🙋
Bird of the Century 🤘🤘🤘
Beautiful! Thank you for sharing. 😃
exellent video very interesting shown as allways with your knoledgable style thanks for sharing
Good morning my friend, fantastic report, congratulation thank 👍💯💢💯™️🤗👍
Thank you from the 🇺🇸 I have never seen a Grebe they are beautiful birds.
Another cracking video Liam - always a pleasure and very informative to watch
Fabulous! Love Grebes and all divers. Pochard Ducks have red eyes too, very endangered though and quite rare. I'm lucky to have three pairs on a man made lake near me, they are fascinating, dive for about 90 seconds.... I think 'where have they gone?', but sure enough they pop up again and go about their business. Bright orange heads during the breeding season, much duller colours in Winter.
Incredible footage! I am in awe with the dance!
Thanks!
Really good informative video again Liam. I really enjoyed your photography. Thanks
awesome
Thanks for another great & informative video , I love a bit of twitching , please carry on with your wildlife film's they cheer up a drab & sometimes depressing world !! PEACE and LOVE to everyone.
My first watch and very enjoyable. Thank you!😊
They're Beautiful And Definetly Will Be One Of The Birds I Plan To See If I Ever Get To Go Overseas
I especially enjoyed the underwater sequences which you rarely see! 👍👍
Hi Liam brilliant video I love the way you explain all about the wildlife you make it very interesting keep your brilliant videos coming Bernard
Grettings from Denmark. I learning a lot from Your videos. Thanks.
What a lovely video, Liam. They are fascinating birds. Thanks for your work.
Stunning birds, I always associate them with foggy mornings for some reason. Mainly because they tend the be on larger bodies of water where you get the rising mist first thing.
I was excited for this one and not disappointed! Awesome footage ^^
Thanks Matey!
I am from the US and they remind me of the Loon very handsome bird thank you for sharing I always interested in your videos
Fabulous
Thank you!
I am from Tirana, Albania and we have a reservoir (artificial lake) at the city park. I saw those birds earlier this spring and checked on internet by describing it. Turned out to be the Great Crested Grebe. There are a least four couples (all nesting) and another bird trying to build a nest. This bird is new to us. I have seen this bird last year but didn't pay attention thinking it was a duck. As you said in the video they lay 2-8 eggs, I hope that if four for each hatching can make it, there will be a significant increase of their number considering food availability. There are also many other waterfowl species in the lake and nobody bothers them. Hopefully they will thrive. Thanks for your informative video and I will keep you posted with the progress.
Wonderful birds . Thank you for this .
Thank you very much sir, for sharing all this beautiful knowledge.
Your welcome, thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!
3:42 What a guzzler!
Wonderful. Thank you. It struck me that in winter plumage how much their heads resemble that of a Grey Heron, (but that could just be me 😀).
They’re the one truly exotic looking creature you are pretty much guaranteed to see on most large lakes.
Thanks once again for the info.👏👏
That was excellent. I have been watching a pair of grebes this year raising two young and whilst I did a bit of reading up on them, you have filled in some gaps for me. Many thanks!
Great. I'm glad to be able to help!
I grew up in the Yorkshire countryside, i loved and knew all the birds in my area. Your videos bring back all those memories of those days. Lying in the meadows watching all the beautiful birds and soaking in nature. I've learnt so much more watching your videos, thank you so much.
I'm 92 tomorrow, so that was a long time ago.
Hi John. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
How lovely to read that my videos take you back to such fond memories and I'm proud that my videos even manage to teach you some new things. I hope you don't mind, I showed some friends and family your message as it really struck a cord with me and reminded me of why I make these videos. Thank you!
Fantastic info
Quite a few facts there that I didn't already know. Great footage and commentary as always.
Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed and learnt something from the video.
Another excellent offering in your "Things you need to know" series. Quite a bit in there which I hadn't come across before, particularly the thing about them eating their feathers and the presumed role that has in moderating their digestive absorption. I did chuckle at the phrase "those pesky Victorians"! 😆 Well done buddy. 👍👍👍
Beautiful and informative video. Thank you very much Liam ❤️
Thank you!
Thank you Liam
Thank you!
This was such a great beautiful enjoyable video to watch and full of great info and some surprising facts too, thanks for all your hard work 👍
Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
thank you
Thanks for watching!
Beautiful birds
Thanks, ive seen one hand over an empty crisp packet as part of the mating ritual. Classy....
I used to see these often when I lived in North Holland and ran by the canals. That's such a lovely country for water fowl. Thanks for all your beautiful videos.
Brilliant video! Grebes are such lovely birds to watch. Especially when courting or with their babies, such a happy sight 😍
Thank you!
Future bird of the century
What makes you say that?
there is a contest in new zealeand for the "bird of the century" and the internet wants this awesome bird to win
@@ColoringKaria IT WON!!!!
About thirty five years ago I was fishing on the Canal and a Great Crested Grebe was serenely swimming the reed mace on the opposite bank with its beautiful crest on display, I watched it most of the day. Later two men appeared from nowhere and shot this magnificent bird with an air rifle, the Great Crested Grebe didn’t die straight away, it swam in a circle of panic with its head on one side. The two men left laughing, it was no good me saying anything as they were on the opposite bank and this was in the days of no mobile phones. It sickened me so much, I packed up my gear in tears and I was ashamed to be of the same species as these two sadistic thugs. “Humanity, what humanity? “
How awful. Poor old grebe!
I came here because of John Oliver. Puteketeke
Who's John Oliver?
A talk show host in the US who loves this bird.
@printfogey5275 thanks. I saw it on the news this evening :)
Your video is wonderful!! 🥰🥰🥰
Saaaame! Puteketeke for the win!
I’ve never seen a grebe before but I’ve read about them in a book of birds I’ve got
Thanks for this I love these birds. I watched a parent feeding their chicks at a park recently, they're great to watch.
Cheers. I'm glad you get to enjoy these birds locally.
Very Interesting.
I actually feel a bit better about the world after watching that
Thanks! Stay tuned for much more.
Thanks Liam, I find your presentations very insightful and super well done! Really enjoy them...keep up the good work of making us aware...Rob
Thank you! I will keep making them as long as people keep wanting and watching :)
Thank you for this informative video :)
You are right they catch small fish Liam. I remember my dad catching a Great Crested Grebe with a fishing lure. We managed to get it back in the water unharmed luckily
very nice video
Pretty sure this year we’ve had a local pair breed twice ! Gotta love a humbug 😊
👍👍👍👌
👍
Another cracking video, wonder what's next?
Thank you. Next up is a species I have been wanting to do for quite a while now, the kingfisher!
Another great one., how about doing other ducks
Cheers Rob. I have done a few other waterbirds, mallards, moorhens and coots if you're interested. I'm adding new ones all the time too, is there any particular species you'd like to see a video about?
Hi Liam have you done a video on the loon bird ?
they are half way between penguins and cormorants in terms of the way they look and act
Same....Putekteke 😂
Yes, I had to check if they were the same species too.
Thanks!