Little Grebe #23

Hubby was out playing games during the day today, so I took myself off to Phoenix Park to see if the Great Crested Grebes were doing any courting. 
They weren't - in fact, I only managed to spot one of the pair and it spent the whole time right in the middle of the lake preening. I hope the other one was just hiding or nesting somewhere in the reeds. 

I took a walk down the Bridgewater canal and managed to spot plenty of mallards, coots and moorhens and a few little grebes. They were quite shy and tended to stay on the other side of the canal in the undergrowth and did plenty of diving, either to escape my camera or to do some fishing. This one was successful and finally managed to manoeuvre it into the correct position to swallow it.