{"id":572757,"date":"2026-03-31T11:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T11:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/572757\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T11:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T11:23:09","slug":"great-crested-grebe-seen-drowning-and-eating-chiffchaffs-in-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/572757\/","title":{"rendered":"Great crested grebe seen drowning and eating chiffchaffs in Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Known for its remarkable and elaborate courtship dance in early spring and the beautiful crest of feathers around its head, the great crested grebe is an elegant waterbird. Its diet is thought to consist mostly of fish.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, it came as a surprise to birdwatcher and photographer Juan Montiel when they spotted two great crested grebes<\/a> hunting common chiffchaffs at Las Ca\u00f1as, an artificial reservoir and nature reserve in the Navarre region of northern Spain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Montiel observed that, as the chiffchaffs<\/a> were hunting small flying insects and invertebrates<\/a> on the water\u2019s surface, two great crested grebes would approach the warblers<\/a> stealthily. The grebes would then catch a chiffchaff, drown it, then swallow it \u2013 albeit with difficulty. During the 90-minute observation session, two further unsuccessful hunting attempts were seen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The photos and report of the behaviour appeared on the French birding website\u00a0Ornithomedia<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"GreatA great crested grebe eating a chiffchaff. Credit: Juan Montiel<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time great crested grebes have been observed catching and eating birds flying over the water. In 2019, Durham Wildlife Trust shared\u00a0a video on Facebook<\/a>, showing a great crested grebe at the Trust\u2019s\u00a0Rainton Meadows Nature Reserve<\/a>\u00a0in England eating a sand martin that it had caught. The video caption mentioned that this behaviour had first been observed a few years previously.<\/p>\n

In addition, a coot<\/a> chick wing was found in the stomach of a great crested grebe in Chile, reported in 1925. Another species, the pied-billed grebe, was observed catching and eating a masked warbler in California in 2016.<\/p>\n

Grebes have also been reported to pluck and eat their own feathers, an unusual and unique behaviour that has long puzzled ornithologists. A description of the black-necked grebe \u2013 a species known as the eared grebe in North America, due to ear tufts \u2013 from 1577 says, “Its food is its feathers, only sometimes it eats fish.\u201d It is thought that the feathers aid the digestion of its prey. Great crested grebes have also been observed plucking their own feathers and feeding them to their chicks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The great crested grebe once faced extinction in England. It was hunted for its much-admired feathers and, at one point in the 1860s, there were only 32 known pairs in the country. Following protection, its population increased and has remained stable since the 1990s. It is included on the Green List of species in the Birds of Conservation Concern.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More wildlife stories from around the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Known for its remarkable and elaborate courtship dance in early spring and the beautiful crest of feathers around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-572757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}