10 : Great Crested Grebe

Great Crested Grebe - Podiceps cristatus

I was in the UK this week and had a few technical difficulties which stopped me from posting. I will need to brush up on my mobile posting otherwise this project will be dead in the water before its started.

So this is Tuesday's post and number 10 and I thought I'd try and go live. I made a dash to Barn Elms WWT, London just the other side of the Thames from Hammersmith. This site has been open for a good 11 or 12 years and its somewhere I used to regulary spend time at the weekends. It was orginally a small resevoir that has now been turned into a fantastic little wetland.

Spring is definately in full swing. Barn Elms proves that if you give nature half a chance it will reward you. Overwintering Bitterns in central London for example ranks for me as a modern miracle. On an ealy evening in June you can catch a beautiful of "suite" of birds - Little Ringed Plover, Sand Martin, Kingfisher, Reed, Chettis and Sedge Warblers - perhaps a Hobby will sweep in.

Great Crested Grebes are one of the birds that really started the conservation movement. There's a marvelous programme and book "Birds Britannica" that details the story. They were trapped perilously to extinction in Britain for hat feathers. At one point in 1860 a rough count had them down to just 42 pairs in the whole of Britain. The first conservation legislation was passed in the next decade and a shift in attitudes began about the way wild birds were looked after. There are now 12,000 breeding birds in Britain driven largely by the creation of gravel pits to dig out materials for building (there's a irony),

For any young birdwatcher in Britain they are probably one of the first "wow" species that they come across. A list with a Great Crested Grebe on, a duck or two, a kestrel and a long tailed tit would keep me happy of an afternoon. They are easy to see and accesible (everyone has a park or river or lake near them)and in Spring they put on displays that can captivate you for hours.

This bird is carrying at least one stripey chick on its back. I only had an hour or so at Barn Elms before I had to dash off for a meeting. It is a poor snap and at some stage I will post some better pictures below. But for now it was lovely to see an old friend and then to read up today to see how well they are now doing in the UK.

Nature just needs half a chance.

I am dropping the points system I orginally started with - it is all so subjective and I am not sure it adds anything to life or my posts. I will rave about some birds and appreciate others. I cannot score a Great Crested Grebe against a Malabar Pied Hornbill. It just does not work does it.

Great Crested Grebe -Podiceps cristatus
Barn Elms WWT, London - Tuesday 17 May 2011