Day 9: Nine Ladies Dancing

There is nothing quite like the sight of the courtship ritual of the Clark’s and the Western Grebes. The ritual involves a variety of feeding, preening, and display behaviours and ends with a mating dance known as ‘rushing’, which involves the pair running across the surface of the water with their heads held forward and necks arched. This impressive dance is goes on for several seconds and ends with both birds diving into the water simultaneously. BBC Life highlights the courtship of a pair of Clark’s Grebes in this video.

Photo credit: Hamilton Greenwood