two nests in the reed jungle

I dont know an english name for this cool birdie -- in russian, we name this duck 'chomga' (Чомга, or Большая поганка; Podiceps cristatus in Latin). Most likely, you also have seen these birds - they live in ponds and lakes throughout Eurasia, except for the most northern regions, Australia and New Zealand, and can be seen in Africa, too.

They have very funny 'Mating Games'. There is a strict ritual, the birds swim towards each other, the feathers of the collar are loose, the birds shake their heads and draw close together. Then they stand upright in the water, in the “penguin pose”, holding bundles of algae in their beaks and offering it to each other as a gift. (A great luck for the cameramen to capture, believe me! you can google yourself some stuff for this).

They use to build a floating nest (60 cm in diameter, up to 80 cm in height) from reeds... Its intresting, that a newborn chicks already can swim.

I was not lucky enough to see the mating dance, I just found two nests on the shore, in the thicket of reeds (this was in May this year). It was hard to take good photos through the reed, especially since I would have only a 150mm macro-telephoto at my disposal and there was poor evening lighting ... I tried to get as close to the nest as possible, but when I broke the invisible border, the chomga left it, and I immediately returned to the starting position ... In general, I got photos below the average level, I'm not very satisfied. I enjoy the fact that I found them and saw them :)

By the way, the chomga sitting on the nest was very funny all the way turning its head - every 2 seconds it turned it 180 degrees, detecting is there any enemies around. She was vigilantly guarding the peace of her offspring! But, just because of this, her head in the pics turned out so blurry : /

The other nest was inhabited by another specie duck. (Her hubbie was floating on the background).

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I provide this for #featheredfriday challenge by @melinda010100 and @keithboon

all images taken by me, with Canon 5D +Sigma 150mm