Country diary: Sometimes the shy visitors are the most welcome
As I walk beside a quiet lochan at the hem of the Cairngorms, a goldeneye family speeds into view. The mother is sleek, with russet crown and yellow eye, while her chicks are tousled fluffballs, but matching her in pace and the comical thrusting of the head. With her, they leap into a dive. Moments later, all re-emerge in a carpet of waterlilies, losing any sense of urgency as they meander through the pads.
Overhead, gulls wheel and tip, corvids feather the air and a grey heron makes a flappy circuit. Below, four tufted ducks turn in languorous circles, dipping and shaking their glossy heads to full effect in the sunshine. In contrast, sand martins perform aerial circus stunts all across the loch, careening about in their crazy, dippy flight, glancing off the water and catapulting into the air.
Round to the right, something has irked the greylag geese, and the sound of ruffled feathers grows into wingbeats and an outraged honking as they rise and circle and land again. A flotilla launches into the water, fuzzy brown goslings in tow, everybody still a-cluck about something.
Meanwhile, a dumpy little bird has been cutting a silver path across the water on the far side, but diving every time I train the binoculars on it and resurfacing far away. Gradually, it paddles closer and I catch enough glimpses to discover that it is a little grebe. The smallest and least flashy of the European grebes, also called a dabchick, is fairly common across the UK's inland waters, but no less charming.
Its distinctive summer markers are the coppery cheeks and throat, the pale gape at the bill and the 'powder puff' rear feathers. Both parents build a raft nest, incubate the eggs and feed the chicks, sometimes carrying them on their backs. It is generally shy and spends more time in long dives than flying.
Today, though, in an inexplicable change of character, it suddenly lifts its skirts and tears across the lily pads as if running for its life. There is no apparent cause. It plumps down again on the other side, shakes its tail feathers and spirits underwater. The lochan ripples and resettles. All is well.
Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
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