The Painshill Park Grebe family is.... still OK..

I'd heard from two people at Painshill that neither had seen anything of Grebes yesterday. Fearing the worst I managed a couple of hours there this morning.

They weren't in their usual spot but around where they had nested.

It became apparent that Dad (on the right) has suffered an injury to his head.

You can see signs of a wound in the picture below.

Mum, initially, was carrying about both of the chicks.

But after a while, she shrugged them off into the water. They swam about for a considerably longer time than when I saw them a couple of days ago.

I'd suspected the other day, that the two youngsters were considerably different in size and now it's much more apparent. These two were side-by-side when I took this picture, so it's nothing to do with perspective that they look so different.

The family then moved on a bit where the lake was more cluttered with branches..

And it was even more apparent later on. And by now they'd moved around directly into the sun.

Dad offered a large fish to the smaller one who had great difficulty in accepting it and dropped it. It was then offered to the larger bird who "gobbled" it down!

Another thing that became very apparent from watching them, was that the larger was acting aggressively to the smaller... on several occasions it stabbed the smaller one in the body or head.. I wouldn't be surprised if the two became one as a result of all this. Time will tell.