Richard Bell's Wild West Yorkshire nature diary
Monday, 12th February, 2007, Newmillerdam Country Park, Wakefield
THE
HEAD-SHAKING DISPLAY of the great-crested grebe is for me the
icon of our local natural history and back in the 1970s I designed this badge
for the Wakefield Naturalist’s Society. Male and female face each other,
necks arched, like heraldic beasts. They then go in for a session of sychronised
preening, rolling over on the placid water to grown breast feathers.
There’s
another pair of grebes swimming along together a hundred yards away lower down
the lake, and, between the two territories, a lone bird.
The
courtship displays of the grebe also included the presentation of a beakful
of weed and what’s known as ‘the ghostly penguin dance’; something
that I hope I’ll get to see some day.
You’d miss this behaviour if you didn’t get out at this time of
year.