{"id":12454,"date":"2015-01-09T19:23:06","date_gmt":"2015-01-10T03:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=12454"},"modified":"2015-01-09T19:23:06","modified_gmt":"2015-01-10T03:23:06","slug":"grebe-1-crayfish-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=12454","title":{"rendered":"Grebe 1, crayfish 0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Of the four species of grebes that frequent Kootenay Lake, the Pied-billed Grebe is the smallest and least often seen. So, when one is spotted, it is worth watching: Will its underwater foraging\u00a0produce anything of interest?<\/p>\n<p>Thursday&#8217;s Pied-billed Grebe made, what to me was, an unexpected find: a crayfish. I did not even realize that Kootenay Lake contained crayfish, and now the grebe was feeding on one&#8212;the grebe knew what I did not.<\/p>\n<p>A Pied-billed Grebe was\u00a0hunting along the shore of Kootenay Lake.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12455\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/piedbilledgrebe150108fs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It dived and surfaced\u00a0with something that, at first, I thought was a fish.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12457\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/piedbilledgrebe150108ds.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But, those dangling legs didn&#8217;t quite fit the profile of a fish.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12460\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/piedbilledgrebe150108as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The grebe had captured a crayfish. Is it is a native Signal Crayfish, <em>Pacifastacus leniusculus<\/em>, or an invasive Rusty Crayfish, <em>Oronectes rusticus<\/em>? My pictures are probably not good enough to distinguish. However, the grebe did not care. Its main problem was\u00a0to turn the crayfish from being athwart its bill to aligned with it so as to swallow it.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12458\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/piedbilledgrebe150108cs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The grebe dropped the crayfish\u00a0and picked it up again so it was aligned with its bill.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12459\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/piedbilledgrebe150108bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Then with one gulp, the crayfish vanished down the grebe&#8217;s gullet.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12456\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/piedbilledgrebe150108es.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Of the four species of grebes that frequent Kootenay Lake, the Pied-billed Grebe is the smallest and least often seen. So, when one is spotted, it is worth watching: Will its underwater foraging\u00a0produce anything of interest? Thursday&#8217;s Pied-billed Grebe &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=12454\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12454"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12476,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12454\/revisions\/12476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}