In the last few days the bird photography Facebook groups that I am on have exploded with dabchick photos. Every photographer in the area with knowledge of the park has been and photographed the youngsters and their parents. I haven’t been back yet because I am still working my way through culling and processing images from last weekend.
Its an extremely hard task when you have so many cute images, but I am getting very ruthless and deleting way more than I am keeping, and still I have over 1000 images to get through. That’s not bad considering I had over 4000 from the two mornings.
I am keen to go back as these chicks mature to record their growth and independence from their parents. They are such quirky little birds, doing all sorts of things that make me laugh. One behaviour I noticed was when they worked in pairs (there were two pairs doing this together at one point) very low to the water hunting for who knows what.
They would kick up a bit of water then flatten themselves back to water level. The chicks just had to hang on for the ride because it was fast and furious there for a bit. I watched them do this two or three times through out the two hours I was there and it was always in the same place. I am curious as to why they were doing it but they aren’t about to tell me any time soon.
This last image I have kept purely for its cuteness factor. The chicks are so tiny this image could almost be life size!