The Great Crested Grebe in Rannebergen

I visit my mother’s place almost every week. She lives in the neighborhood where I grew up in the suburbs of Gothenburg at a place called Rannebergen.

It is a lovely area where you can walk straight out into the Nature Reserve of Vättlefjäll. A place I really should explore more nowadays.

A couple of weeks ago she told me that Mölnesjön, the lake just a hundred of meters from where she lives, had a Great Crested Grebe couple that seems to be coming back each year. And when I saw the Goosander with young ones on Tuesday I decided to take my camera with me when I visited mother on Wednesday.

It was a warm and lovely day with summer temperatures so there were a lot of sun worshippers out around the lake. Some just tanning themselves while the kids mostly enjoyed splashing in the water.

We soon discovered some Mallard Ducks but couldn´t see neither the Great Crested Grebe nor the Canada Geese couple that should be here.

I took up a place at the water’s edge and brought out the binoculars to see if I could discover anything of interested. It is important that one have patience because you often miss the obvious when you do a quick scan and then just move on. It took me a couple of minutes before I saw the Great Crested Grebe with what seemed to be 2 young ones. They were in the middle of the lake so I had to watch the direction they were heading at. I realized they were moving into the area of the lake where people have least access to so that was where I had to go.

Here we also discovered the Canada Geese who also had some young ones. This couple seems also to be coming back to this area each year but tens to choose between to lakes.

Now I had the sun in my back but the Grebe was still out of range. They moved over to other side of this little “bay” so if I was to take any photos I would have to do it in back light. So I moved to the other side and found me a nice spot from where I could take some photos without stressing the birds in any way. I stayed there for 15 minutes test different setups, also switching between my teleconverters, before I called it a day and headed home.

At home I discovered that it actually where 3 young ones, can´t understand how I missed it, and that one stayed on top of the adult the whole time. On some of the pictures you can see how it is sheltered from the sun by the feathers from the parent.