Very small, brown diving duck, Scotland (1 Viewer)

[Steph_Chivas]

Hey all,

I am very new to bird photography and only really have the one telephoto lens at the moment so I apologize for the blurry photos here.

Anyway, I'm in Scotland and down near the River Ayr, South Ayrshire and my mom grew up reading all sorts of bird and animal books. So really if I see a bird while I'm out walking my dog and come home and describe it to her she will almost 100% of the time be able to name the bird from description alone and find a picture of it in our bird book and it will be correct.

So when we seen a couple of these wee birds at the start of December she was actually surprised to not know what they were. Since then I have been on the hunt with my camera daily to try and get a photo of one of them to see if we had a better chance at seeing what it was... unfortunately we're still stumped.

It is very small and very skittish so trying to get close to it without it diving away has been very difficult but today I managed to get a few photos of it before I lost it completely.

I really hope someone can help us identify this little creature because we're pretty sure it's not a local bird but google searches have proved a bit fruitless as all we know about it is that it's small, brown, looks like a duck and dives under the water XD

I'll upload the photos I got of it today, one has a mallard just at the edge of the photo which will properly indicate it's tiny size for you guys. Really hoping I can finally get an answer to what this one is to inform my mom too ^_^



Steph

 

[Steph_Chivas]

Here are the remaining 2 photos... I don't think it'll make much difference but thought I'd upload all I had. Again I wish I knew more about taking better photos and maybe had a better lens for these but I'm hoping someone maybe able to give me a clue as to what bird we're seeing here and if it is indeed a local bird or something else.

Steph

 

[KGS]

Little Grebe

 

[MTem]

Yep, Little grebe.

 

[Steph_Chivas]

OMG thank you, I have no idea why this did not come up in our internet searches. But looking at the first image of it on a website it has a very colourful plumage in summer months, so perhaps we just dismissed it thinking it the wrong bird. I'm so happy we know what they are now! I really hope it will still be around come summer so I can get a look or photo of it then to compare the different summer/winter feathers. I will need to go and recheck our bird book now and see if it showed the winter plumage and we just did not see it.

They must be quite new to this particular stretch of river since we've been coming down to it ever since I was a child and my mom had no idea what this lil bird was. I'll be hoping it's maybe a mated pair that we seen back in those first days of December so we can look out for some new wee chicks come breeding season. I always love finding new wildlife to look out for on my daily dog walks

 

[Nutcracker]

They breed on ponds, and often winter on rivers (which don't freeze so easily). So it won't stay on the river for the summer, you'll need to look for them on nearby ponds.