A happy family

Both adult Great Crested Grebes were on the water when I stopped at the artificial island on my way to the sanctuary this afternoon. One of them swam away after a few minutes and the other one kept disappearing behind a clump of reed most of the time I was there. On the few photos I eventually managed to take I could only get a glimpse of the chicks on the parent's back but I could never clearly see whether it was carrying 3 or only 2 of them.

It had looked like the 4th egg had gone when I'd arrived at the island but when I took a shot with the camera on full digital zoom of what I thought was an empty nest, I could see that part of the egg shell was still there as well as one of the grebelets. Sadly it was lying completely flat in the nest and never moved the entire 30 minutes I was there so I can only assume that it wasn't alive any longer, which probably explains why both adult Grebes had abandoned the nest and weren't showing any interest in it anymore.

In previous years the Grebes didn't stay in the area of the island very long once they'd taken to the water so I don't know if they will still be there when I'll stop there again on Monday.

I didn't think that any of the photos taken at the island were worthy of a blip but fortunately I was able to get a few shots of this little Mallard family when Brutus, one of the sanctuary's Staffordshires, and I walked past the small pond at the park.

Thank you very much for all the lovely comments and stars on my grebelets blip from yesterday.