There’s been a Great Northern Diver at Foxcote Reservoir in Buckinghamshire for a few days now, and as it was still being reported this morning, and it was a bright, sunny day, I thought I’d drive over and take a look. This isn’t a site I’d ever visited before – and honestly, unless something truly spectacular takes up residence there, I doubt I’ll ever go again – but the area is an old stomping ground of mine from several lifetimes ago, so I had no difficulty in finding the place.
I spotted the Diver within seconds of entering the hide, but it was a couple of hundred metres out, and showing no sign of coming any closer any time soon. I know, because I’ve seen photos, that over the weekend it spent most of its waking time swimming up and down just outside the hide, but sadly by this morning it had decided to explore the fishing potential of the rest of the reservoir, across which it ranged fast and unpredictably for the hour and forty minutes I managed to keep watching it. The problem was that the hide at Foxcote is almost completely open – essentially, it’s a blind with a roof – and although the water looked fabulous in the bright sunshine, there was a vicious wind blowing across it. It was absolutely perishing.
Another photographer arrived a few minutes after me, and we shared spotting duties, compared estimates of the bird’s distance from the hide and our thoughts about whether it was moving closer in or further away, and generally encouraged each other to keep going. “Just another fifteen minutes,” became the mantra of the morning. Eventually though, when the Diver first settled down to preen, and then tucked in its head for a nap, I decided I’d had enough. At the time it was about twice as far away as this, which was its closest pass of the morning, and though the wind was moving it towards the hide I had no confidence that it would arrive before hypothermia set in. As it was, when I stood up to leave I staggered on jelly legs, tripped, and banged into a protruding bracket on the wall of the hide in a way that was almost as embarrassing as it was painful. The bruise is already quite something to see – but luckily for you, I won’t be posting any photos.
By the way, while this isn’t my best ever photo of a Great Northern Diver, it does have one point of interest, in showing the first adult I’ve ever caught on camera. The majority of Divers that winter on inland waters in England seem to be juveniles, and every other one I’ve photographed has the tell-tale ‘scaly’ back and wing feathers of an immature bird, but this individual is still showing remnants of its breeding plumage from earlier in the year.
R: L2, C1, D19.
