Birds in nature, landscape and others.
The Great Crested Grebes of Lake Sayama are acting in large flocks. I wonder how many birds are there.
I zoomed in on the image above and counted how many birds there were.
There are probably close to 400 birds of them.
The Great Crested Grebes are moving around the lake to capture fishes. When they start to dive all at once, you may not be able to see them from the surface of the lake.
See the video for more details.
I had heard that many Great Crested Grebes were wintering in Lake Sayama, so I went to see them on December 17, 2021. I arrived at the dam site at 12:50 p.m. I could see only a few Great Crested Grebes in the wide lake. I wondered where the other Great Crested Grebes were resting.
The photographer told us that they were in the center of the lake in the morning. We had to wait for them to come out. The remaining Great Crested Grebes were moving to the left side of the lake.
I saw a few Great Crested Grebes around the water intake tower, so I moved to the right bank.
At around 14:42, a few Great Crested Grebes started to appear around the water intake tower. They were moving to the right side. They seemed to be waiting for the next one.
As I gradually swung the camera to the left, the main group appeared. It was a large flock.
This area (image-6) seemed to be the tail end of the group. While watching the video, I did a quick count from the front, and there were 190 birds.
The flock of Great Crested Grebes seems to have passed on (image -7).
To my surprise, another group appeared.
In the middle of the image, where there is a long, thin glow (image-10), there is a flock of Great Crested Grebes. A quick count showed that there were 150 of them. I didn’t photograph some of them, but it seemed that there were about 400 in total.
A scene of a Great Crested Grebe catching a fish.
It was almost 16:00, and it was getting dark, so I finished shooting.
Here is the video.
It was my first time to see the great crested grebes. I didn’t expect to see courtship behavior at this time of year. The location was Mizumoto Park, Katsushika-ku, Tokyo. The background music was created by myself using music notation software. The movie was taken on December 5, 2021.
Video taken at the time.