At first, I thought it was a pale, odd-looking cormorant. But as it flew upriver, I realised its true identity: a diver, but which one? I had my suspicions it would prove to be the largest of the three regular British species. And when we examined the photos, taken by my friend Geoff as the bird flew away, we were proved correct: the first great northern diver here on my coastal patch.
While its smaller, red-throated and black-throated cousins breed in northern Britain, the great northern has never done so. Instead, they travel here in winter from Iceland, Greenland and Arctic Canada. I’ve seen them in spring in the Outer Hebrides, sporting their smart black-and-white breeding plumage, but this individual was far less showy: dull grey above, and pale below.
This species features in two classic works of art. In Arthur Ransome’s postwar children’s story Great Northern?, a group of youngsters discover the birds actually breeding in the Hebrides. And in the Oscar-winning 1981 movie On Golden Pond, the divers – or loons, as the Americans call them – are a backdrop to the human drama, played out by Jane and Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn.
A few days after I saw the diver on the coast, perhaps the same bird turned up inland, on our local reservoir. However, it soon began to weaken and eventually died, perhaps from bird flu; a sad end to a majestic, and very special, bird.
