Grebes at Casey Pond

[Julie Clark <>]

Hi All,

Sandra Henderson and Sue Lashko have both reported the presence of an Australasian Grebe nest on Casey Pond in the past  couple of weeks.

Len & I visited the pond yesterday and also saw the nesting grebes. We also caught a very brief glimpse of a tiny chick, under the parent's wing, being fed by the other parent.

We returned to the pond late today only to find that the nest had been washed away. We don't know if there was more than one chick, but I think it's reasonable to assume that there were more eggs and this chick was perhaps the first and only one to hatch, with the others being lost.

We found the adults a short time later and, by watching from a distance, we eventually observed the tiny chick transfer from one parent to the other, briefly swimming between the two. We left fairly quickly as we didn't want to stress them.

A couple of long distance, heavily cropped photos taken through the reeds are on Flickr. Hopefully this little chick will survive this trauma.  This seems pretty late in the season for a new brood.

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Cheers

Julie
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Julie Clark