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Northumberland has been on fire recently for rare birds. At some point in the past week or so White-billed Diver, American Pipit, Ross’s Gull, and Grey-headed Lapwing have all been present. While the Diver is not the rarest of the four, that award would surely go to the Lapwing, it’s the one that piqued my interest the most as there is a great big hole in my UK list where it should sit. In contrast, I have previously seen and photographed the other three quite well.
There are five living members of the order Gaviiformes, (Divers, or Loons if you are American) worldwide. These being the foresaid White-billed Diver, Great Northern Diver, Pacific Diver, Black throated and Red Throated Divers. I have seen the other four in the UK, in some cases many times, so a twitch to see the White-throated would give me the complete set of Gaviiformes.
One of my best birding experiences occurred when watching a pair of courting Red throated Divers on a Scottish lock during a birding trip with Jeremy a good few years back. Watching these stunning birds displaying and calling to each other with their almost supernatural wail on this remote Scottish loch was really unforgettable.
The White-billed Diver is actually not the rarest of the five in the UK, it only commands a one star rarity rating in the Colins bird bible, that honour goes to the Pacific Diver (3 star Collins rarity), but it is usually only recorded as a winter bird around the coast of northern Scotland including Shetland. These records are hence almost exclusively sea based making a very long twitch even more problematic as the sea is, rather obviously, a very big place for a bird to hide in. The Northumberland bird seemed, rather unusually, settled on an in land lake making a twitch much more attractive.
The Diver was located near Amble at Druridge Bay Country Park some 280 miles or close to 5 hours drive from home. This is pretty much at the limit of a one day twitch for me and I would normally stay over and make this a two day trip but other unbreakable commitments made this impossible on this occasion.
So I was up at that early hour that twitchers are accustomed to, i.e. silly o’ clock, on a very cold and dark January morning. The car was registering -7 degrees centigrade as I drove down my sparkly frosty drive. A fairly uneventful drive, except for my screen washer jets freezing, with a couple of stops had me driving into the country park just before 10 am. I realised as I was driving in that I have visited this country park before a number of years back on one of my trips up to the Shetland ferry in Aberdeen when I saw a couple of Wood Sandpipers.
Druridge Bay Country Park is a picturesque country park adjacent to the Northumberland coast, its main feature being the large and attractive Ladyburn lake in its centre. It’s a popular spot for local families who, I suspect, were somewhat bemused by the presence of a rather large crowd of birders peering into the centre of the lake. On some twitches, for example for rare leaf warblers, you can spend the whole day staring into a bush hoping for a glimpse. My diver was at the very opposite end of the difficulty spectrum, an unmissably and obviously impressive big bird in the middle of the lake.
The white-billed diver is the largest member of the diver family. Adults in breeding plumage are very attractive with a black head, white underparts, and a chequered black-and-white mantle. Winter plumage is much drabber being mainly pale browns and white. Its main distinguishing feature, which gives it its name, is its huge dagger like yellow-white bill which appears slightly uptilted. It breeds in the Artic and winters at sea along the coasts of the northern Pacific Ocean and northwestern Norway but occasionally strays well south of its normal wintering range. Like all divers it is a specialist fish eater and a very strong swimmer catching its prey under the water.
Just after I arrived the Diver, a juvenile, swam to the opposite side of the lake to where we were observing it. I thought about walking around the lake to get a better view but I soon clocked that it was highly mobile moving from one side of the lake to the other with ease so I waited and it soon came back close to our bank. It seemed to prefer fishing towards the bank but in all the times it dived I never saw it surface with a fish, either it was entirely unsuccessful or it was swallowing them under water. As a juvenile it really was rather drab in colour which seemed to make is huge and rather lethal looking dagger like beak stand out even more – it would be a brave man you tried to ring this brute!
To appreciate how this ugly duckling will soon metamorphise into a stunning beauty, here is a free to use library picture of an adult in summer plumage.
I spent a good 2 hours watching the Diver. It would sometimes flap along the surface to move from one spot to another and I wondered whether it was injured in some way and not able to fly properly but towards mid-day it took off with real purpose and headed out to sea. As I write this a couple of days after my visit it has not returned to the lake. I really was quite glad of my silly o clock start! To have left later and missed it entirely really would have been depressing after such a long drive.
Another birder put me on a Bittern which was in the far reed bank. A family walked by it on the path flushing it and we had prolonged flight views as it departed. The other scarcity interest on the lake was a rather poorly marked Ring- necked Duck, an American vagrant, in amongst the numerous other overwintering wildfowl.
After the Diver departed I returned to the pleasant and highly recommended café in the visitors centre for a warming cuppa and a yummy bacon sandwich made all the better with an overindulgence of tomato source. If I got the Diver early enough I had planned to go and see the Ross’s gull, a dainty almost dove like bird that I have only seen once before. It was however not reported during my visit or subsequently. The Lapwing had been nearby but that had also done a bunk from its favoured field the day before. I suspect the very hard frozen ground stopped it feeding and made it move. The Pipit was still present and showing well but it was apparently a very long walk from the parking spot and having got, by my standards at least, very nice pictures of a bird in Devon a few years back, I was tired from my early start and didn’t particularly fancy the long walk.
I had a second cup of tea and waiting another hour or so but the Ross’s gull was not relocated so, for once in my life, I decided to do the sensible thing and start the long frosty drive back in day light. I was feeling very upbeat and positive that I had managed to get a new UK life tick under my belt so early in the new year. My UK bird list now stands at 423.
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