Great Northern Diver - Gavia Immer
In my Sibley the name is Common Loon but I am going to stick with the naming from the Handbook of the Birds of the World. Latin names usually correspond apart from when there is a difference of opinion as to whether something is a separate species or not.
These are enigmatic birds - beautiful, sleek, carefully plumaged. I have seen these perhaps 15 years ago on a large reservoir in West London. The days when a day out for me was a walk around a reservoir. I loved my birding then - really dug for my birds. I was a year lister as well as a life lister so every year every bird was new and up for grabs. I no longer have the same competitive concern to see say a Bullfinch every year of my life. These days its a decent shot and a moment with a bird - up goes the page and its logged.
I remember a children's nature programme that was on during the long Summer holidays - a bloke who seemed to paddle up and down a big lake looking at beavers a lot - at the end a sunset over a conifer fringed lake and the haunting echoing cries of "Loons".
My Loon was in a small bay after a walk through a tribal first nations landscape with descriptive boards detailing the peoples relationship with the land. I would love to come back here in the Spring to hear their haunting cries - perhaps paddle down a great lake.
Great Northern Diver, Gavia Immer
Pacific Rim National Park, Vancouver Island, British Columbia Canada
5 August 2014
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