On the River Cam today:
A great crested grebe on its floating nest. Its partner was nearby, standing guard.
It's a phone picture but the quality seemed good enough to share. We were surrounded by the sound of whitethroat whilst watching the grebe. A good walk.
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I was lucky enough to see the great crested grebe mating dance where they copy one another then end with the running on water together.
A truly spactacular programmed in culture of the species and very beutiful too.
I saw it a few weeks ago – maybe even this bird
It is amazing
Mine was Madia Vale many years ago now probably a decade ago!
Stunning birds – used to see in Kenya I think. Was lucky enough to live there for a few years
Great sight.
Havent seen that – but did get an emerging bittern from the reeds in River Lee Country Park to the extent I can still do a passable impression.
Hear two bittern this morning at WWT Welney – but like most of the warblers in the area I did not see them
On the matter of rivers, the very foolish leader of the Scottish LibDems, Alex Cole-Hamilton (you will probably never have heard of him; few in Scotland have heard of him), has astonishingly argued the English water companies are doing a better job than Scotland’s publicly owned water company, because they are measuring the excrement they are dumping.
The passive inadequacy of the investment in water infrastructure by private companies in England (which remain profitable for a wretchedly, expensive service) simply passes over his head (and the BBC Scotland ‘journalists’ interviewing him). We live in a country in which the neither the public nor private sector invest in the crumbling infrastructure. We can see the consequent, inveitable economic decline. We have compounded the failure with bad politics, and worse economic and monetary policies. And this is the kind of answer we are offered by the sit-on-the-fence LibDem, craven wafflers who embraced austerity in 2010; because they understand nothing at all about economics.
There is no prospect of Scottish people allowing water to pass into public hands. The scale of investment in infrastructure in Scotland, including water is, however determined above all by austerity. We have known for a century what to do; use Government’s capacity to fund investment in infrastructure; it is not as if we haven’t lived too long on Victorian infrastructure that is now out of date, in the wrong place, of falling apart through decay and negligence; ultimately through the negligence of politicians, because too many vote for people like Cole-Hamilton.
The failure, gross ignorance and shallow understanding of our politicians in Britain; the slow collapse of our shabby, Ruritanian institutions; and the apparent catatonic state of the electorate that allows all this to unfold, almost unheeded; like a slow motion train crash, has become something to behold.
I am envious. No chance of seeing a Great Crested Grebe here in Buckinghamshire, as faf as I know. In fct, diminishing chance of seeing amy species beyond the bog standard here in Bucks. Bird life has been devstated over the last 60 years at least. Back in the 60s, I lived with my mum and dad in rutal Hertfordshire, in an isolated cottage surrounded by arable and pasture. I counted on year something lie 30 different bird species there. Great flocks of lapwing over the fields, three different species of owl at night, long tailed tits, blackcaps, three different species of wagtail ; linnets, kestrel of course, nuthatch, greenfinch, goldcrest, willow tit, corn bunting/yellowhammer, three different types of woodpecker,all of the corvids bar chough and raven, the usual sparrows and dunnockand, chaaffinch, bullfinch, many more. Now I live forty kilometres away, in a cottage similarly located amid arable and pasture. And few of those species I used to see are now present in ou garden and the adjacent farmland. The lapwing have gone. Kestrel are a rare sight. Only one species of woodpeckers. Ten years since I saw a yellowhammer. We have buzzard in the nearby spinney which is a recent arrival, but so many other species have gone. Jay, magpi, crows and jackdaws come to the garden, and there is a rookery nearby, but otherwise, the birdlife is sadly depleted.
Agreed
I was pleased to see a linnet this morning