Nature is full of curious things. Did you know, for instance, that great crested grebes carry their chicks on their backs and feed them feathers?These water birds make excellent parents. Male and female divide up the role, sharing a clutch between them and carrying the stripey hatchlings piggyback until they can fend for themselves. They make a floating nest in which they usually lay two eggs - one fluffy, striped hatchling for each parent to care for. Young grebes are capable of swimming and diving almost at hatching, but the adults keep them close by carrying them on their backs until they've taught them to dive and fish. They show them how by leaving the chicks to float on the surface; and then diving and re-emerging a few feet away so that the chicks can swim back onto them.
But did you know grebes eat their own feathers, and feed them to their young. The function of this behaviour is uncertain but it is believed to assist with pellet formation and to reduce their vulnerability to gastric parasites.
Enjoying this? Did you know that before they begin their journey as parents, grebes perform the most romantic courtship dance of all British birds on Valentine's Day? Click here to read all about it and see my painting of this touching spectacle.
My summer art exhibition opens on June 3rd 2017 and the theme this year is 'Bringing Up Baby'. I'll be exhibiting my latest collection of paintings, photographs and video of wild birds and animals with their young and exploring the extraordinary bonds between birds and their broods.
Among the many styles of bird parenting is that of fostering. Click here to read my blog on one of the nature's best foster parents, the cuckoo. Or click here for the extraordinary tale of how I persuaded a first time barn owl mum to adopt. And there's even more on 'fostering' in nature in the story of my tawny owl foster parents here.
