Wild at Hull: Great Crested Grebes

Tuesday, 8 February 2022

Hull urban birds. 30. Great Crested Grebes

Great Crested Grebes are slender, elegant birds, the size of a duck. White underside with grey-brown backs, bill and neck long. In the breeding season they are very distinctive in the breeding season for their head gear: a tufted crest atop their heads and on the sides of the head. These are chestnut and black and can be raised and fanned when the birds are alert, or courting. The young have dark stripes on their head. The elaborate courtship display takes place in the open water in the spring: partners mirror each others movements, including mock preening, head turning and much head shaking, which shows off the crest plumes. The display finishes by the pair first diving to collect weed and they emerging while raising their bodies over the water, chest to chest, in what is known as the 'penguin dance'. Great Crested Grebes feed mostly on fish, which they obtain by diving, and require small fish to feed their young, so they tend to live in lakes with plenty of marginal vegetation.

Status and distribution in Hull

Great Crested Grebes are scarce in Hull, but a pair or two usually nest at East Park and are present year round, so they are easy to watch. Other sites where single individuals are recorded occasionally are Oak Road Lake, Roebank Reservoir and Noddle Hill Lake.

Adult carrying one young on its back, being followed by three other young, 27 April 2014

A juvenile at East Park, 10 September 2019.

A parent bringing a fish to a juvenile, 18 June 2019.

An adult trying to manage a fish while chased by a juvenile, East Park, 5 October 2017.

When emerging from a dive the plumes are pressed against the head. East Park, 15 June 2021.

A Great Crested Grebe with a large fish, which it managed to swallow after a while. East Park, 9th September 2021.

Conservation and management

Great Crested Grebe populations are generally stable and they are Green listed.

More information

Broughton, Richard K. Birds of the Hull Area. Kingston Press. Hull, UK.

Wednesday, 29 May 2013

Wild at the park

Few trips to the park fail to produce an amazing sight that rivals any you could have got in remote 'wild' places. Today in East Park, clouds of little black flies, larger than midges, danced over the lake surface, presumably egg laying. Below them, an area of the lake water was spitting like it was raining, although the cause were tens of sticklebacks feeding on the eggs, or the flies, or both, occasionally jumping out. Near this spectacle, a pair of Great Crested grebes were fishing. Before diving, they lowered their face under the water surface, and moved their head looking around for the best prey (above, note the flies!). A food chain in action flies-to-fish-to-grebes. The kids loved it.
Swallows were hunting over the grassy fields. A pair settled on the ground just after I had explained to my son that they only stopped on wires or high perches (ooops! nothing like the bare facts contradicting what I had just said). I was surprised, until I saw that both birds were collecting nest material. I never knew they bred in the heart of town.
There was a veritable Greylag geese nursery on the grassy hill by the little zoo. The goslings had grown a lot since last month, some of them almost as large as their parents. They still walked by their parents, fluffy, and awkward. The adults are now moulting, synchronising their moult to the period of the year that they must protect their flightless young, and therefore, little flight is needed. A lone adult, with its charge of grown goslings, walked by a full family.