A Pied Moment

When I first learned that the Pied-billed Grebe can submerge just like a submarine going straight down rather than diving, I wanted that photograph. That was a whole lot easier to dream of than to execute. Pied means multi-colored and if you look at the bill, you can see how it was named Pied-billed Grebe. This truly small water bird tends to be shy keeping its distance specifically from wildlife photographers. Late one evening at Green Cay a couple of weeks back, this individual was highly focused on some food source right next to the boardwalk. It seemed not to notice me, which was lucky as it was frame filling. It was a dark hole so the ISO was cranked up to 3200 just to get 1/60 shutter speed. The grebe was actively going down and chasing its prey. It ignored me and I tried to move to keep up with its chasing. The water was shallow enough to see it darting back and forth under the surface. That would give me a little window into where I should expect it to pop back up and make a possible click. The twenty minutes of entertainment only garnished a dozen sharp images but it just takes one to make me smile. This one made me smile, a pied moment.