Birding away those pre-Christmas Blues, December 2021

I always seem to get a bit fed up towards the end of the year and especially just before the Christmas break. So much so that I call the last week or so before I down tools and stuff my stupid face with unhealthy foodstuffs, the pre-Christmas Blues time. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the holiday which these days now lasts well into the start of January, and I get time to go out more and get more birding in. Problem is I can never be bothered to do much, there is just too much stress involved as we near the end of December.

Luckily the birds don't care about my woes and help me to get mobile and outdoors despite my inner protestations. A Great Northern Diver was the first such bird to banish the local winter blues when it pitched up at Farmoor on the 12th December, although because of a heavy workload and because I've seen a fair few in the county before, Mrs Caley and I weren't able to see it until the morning of Saturday the 18th. In fact the first bird to get me locally mobile in December was a massively out of season Dotterel that had been discovered on Port Meadow the week before the Diver had arrived. We had looked for it on the 10th with no success and it was thought that it had departed but a non-birder photographer had photographed it unknowingly on the 16th so it could conceivably still be in the area, possibly hiding away amongst the Golden Plover flocks on Otmoor. Anyway, after all the shenanigans that have taken place at Farmoor throughout the last year where the so called "Friends of Farmoor" haven't exactly been friendly and for reasons that I can't fathom, have consistently suppressed or tried to suppress birds found there, the Great Northern Diver was big enough to get noticed by other birders visiting the site and who were convivial enough to put the news out.

The Diver is a juvenile which, as all young Diver species do, bears an almost nondescript grey and white plumage as opposed to the richly marked adult summer breeding suits. However, it isn't a dull bird since on close inspection the feathers of the back and wings are intricately marked with pale fringes. The Great Northern Diver (GND) is a substantial bit of kit as well, almost Gannet sized with a huge and formidable looking bill that I certainly wouldn't want to see up close and personal that many unfortunate fish will. Not for the first time this year, I debated "Who'd be a fish" as we watched the Diver float serenely along on the flat, calm waters of F1, the smaller of the two basins at Farmoor. The grey tones of the bird had been mentioned by just about every photographer who had apologetically posted photos of the bird on social media using the, "A grey bird on a grey day" excuse to mask the fact the photos weren't up to scratch when of course many were excellent as they always are. The quality of a photograph shouldn't matter, the important part is capturing the moment and preserving the memory of the experience and if that was, "A grey bird on a grey day" which resulted in less than optimal images then so be it.

An over eager chap had sat himself on the embankment steps and actually had his feet immersed in the water. I know that people venturing onto the slimy concrete surrounds at Farmoor are frowned upon by the site rangers and as I passed him I suggested that he should be wary if one came passing by because he would surely be advised to return to the causeway itself or even ejected from the site. It's a health and safety issue since a fully clad bloke with attached optical equipment wouldn't fare too well in the water, unlike the Diver which was in its element and happened to be swimming only around thirty feet off the bank so I couldn't quite understand why the chap wanted to be the extra five feet closer anyway. The GND having given me a couple of snapshot poses which all looked the same when reviewed dived suddenly beneath the murky waters. It reappeared almost forty-five seconds later and around fifty metres further away. We walked towards the spot where it had surfaced but halfway there it dived again and repeated the procedure. It swam underwater faster than we walked and always stayed out of reach for further photos. I gave up following it, knowing that I'd get other chances to photograph it later, and concentrated on enjoying the walk and looking for some of the other species around the reservoir. The Greater Scaup that had been seen regularly eluded us and despite much searching we couldn't find it. I took some slow motion blurry photos of flying Great Crested Grebes and Tufted Ducks instead.

We walked back along the causeway but now there was no sign of the Diver at all. As we approached the marina we saw that the chap was still sat by the waters edge reviewing his own photos and video that he'd taken earlier. We elected to walk around the eastern end of F1 in the hope that the Scaup was sheltering in the bay beyond the Tower. We passed the Tower and noticed that the Diver was floating along a bit further around the reservoir so we trotted off towards it. The GND must have seen us coming though because it downed periscope and dived, emerging back into our world when some hundred metres further away. I tried futilely to catch the bird up but gave up when it was clear that the Diver again held all the aces. I adopted a different strategy and sat on the wall and waited, hoping for the bird to return from its hunting voyage along the northern edge of the reservoir. While we sat there we noticed that a Thames Water van had parked up on the causeway and the waterside Togger was being requested to come back roadside. His struggles to climb the steps proved just how ill advised it is to venture down them in the first place. We then had to stay patient for almost another half an hour until we saw the Diver surfacing and diving closer to us again. After every dive it reappeared fifty metres or so nearer to our position so I readied myself for it to pop up right in front of our viewpoint which it duly did. Now I could take some more photos of the grey bird floating on grey water but unlike so many I was happy with my shots and I like the grey monotones of them. I know several Toggers had rushed up to the reservoir the afternoon before because the sun, for the first time in what seemed like ages, had appeared for about an hour so that they could get some photos of the bird showing that it actually exhibited a bit of colour, the grey and white appearing more greenish and buff when illuminated. By sitting in one place we had however, been rewarded by a very close pass by the Diver which in any light and weather is a very beautiful and impressive creature.

We followed the GND back towards the Tower getting a few more close views as it resurfaced between dives. Interestingly when it reached the Tower it swam out and around it rather than venture beneath the access bridge. The GND we saw at Pangbourne back at the end of 2018 had no such qualms in swimming under a footbridge there even as we stood on. it. When the Diver made it back to the marina corner it was disturbed by another of the recent recreation sports to plague the reservoir when the paddle boarders took to the water and carelessly charged their way through anything that floated in their way. The GND easily outmanoeuvred them of course but took refuge in the centre of the reservoir and was no longer as confiding for the latecomers as it had been for us. We left the paddle boarders, sailors, windsurfers, joggers and walkers to it. Farmoor was so much better before the pandemic and associated lockdowns during which time so many other recreationists had discovered the place which before had mainly been the bastion of just us birders and anglers.

Another grey and white bird was discovered on the Tuesday before Christmas Day in Milton Keynes. The drab coloured bird found on Furzton Lake was a Slavonian Grebe, a bird that breeds in the UK but only in Scotland, and one that is even more gaily coloured when wearing its summer dress than the Diver that we saw a few days before. In the winter though, adults and juveniles, like the Great Northern Diver and other members of the Grebe family, are decked out in a subdued grey and white plumage but they remain beautiful birds owing to the bright red eyes and a thin red loral stripe that shine through in any grey weather conditions, the likes of which the UK was firmly entrenched in. We hadn't seen a Slavonian Grebe yet this year so I was keen to go and see this one. My chance came the following afternoon after finishing work and Mrs Caley and I were able to get to the site just after two o'clock. It was but a short walk from the carpark to the wooden bridge from which the Grebe had been showing extremely well throughout it stay so far. We joined a couple of other birders on the bridge and immediately saw the Slavonian (Slav) Grebe, our 261st bird of 2021, swimming and diving for food in the middle of the small arm of water that leads away from the main lake. I didn't take any photos but just watched the bird for a while until it disappeared into a stand of reeds.

Without any warning the Slav was suddenly right below the bridge and I finally primed the camera and took some shots. Slavonian Grebes can be incredibly confiding, especially so when not breeding, and this bird wasn't about to buck that trend. If we hadn't been on a bridge some ten feet above the water then we'd have been eyeball to eyeball with the bird. The Slav frequently dived and we could see it easily move through the shallow water when submerged. 

As with all diving birds the Grebe would resurface some way away from where it submerged and on one occasion it had caught itself a small Perch, but still sizeable for a small Grebe, which it readily consumed and quickly too since it attracted attention from one of the Great Crested Grebes that didn't appear to take too kindly to its presence on "their" lake. A Grey Heron watched on from above as well.

I left Mrs Caley enjoying the grandstand view and went to sit on the bank by the water using a tree as cover and waited for the Grebe to swim back into the open water by the bridge again. It didn't take long before I was enjoying point blank views of the smart little bird which appeared to be as interested in me and another couple of birders as we were in it. The reed fringed reflections on the water and the frequent ripples created by the diving Grebes, Coots and Ducks gave my images a really interesting backdrop and for once bright sunny conditions were not required to get sharp and beguiling images.

With the arrival of a dozen other birders we decided to leave for home, it wouldn't and couldn't get any better than we'd experienced already. We had been on site for less than half an hour but had enjoyed unrivalled views of a beautiful bird species regardless of its plumage state or the dreary weather conditions.