Late yesterday afternoon I had an email from friends in Brixham telling me that there was a White-billed Diver in the harbour and very visible from the breakwater. This is a very rare bird in the UK and possibly one of the first photo opportunities in Devon. I am not certain how many sightings that there have been in the county, but I believe that this bird is only the second on record. So just after dawn even though I have a nasty cold and do not feel well at all, I climbed in to the car and made my way there. The weather was the brightest that we have had for days and I was quite excited as I parked the car and other birders told me that they had had good close up sightings already. I walked up the breakwater to join the few well equipped birders who told me that the bird in question was now in the distance, still in the harbour but at least 200 hundred yards away. We waited in the hope that it would work it's way back to our side of the harbour. Then a guy in a small 15 foot boat chugged past and I shouted to him to ask if he would take me in to the harbour, for a small bribe! He didn't immediately agree but then he beckoned me to the steps at the end of the breakwater. I thanked him profusely, climbed onboard and off we went! What a result! We cruised towards the other end of the harbour and within 20 seconds we were just a few feet from a spanking Black-throated Diver which wasn't in the least bit spooked or stressed by the boat ……brilliant!!!!
We lingered and I took loads of pictures which I haven't had chance to look at yet…..(watch this space). The small wooden boat moved on in to the inner harbour, the sea was like a mill pond and there it was, one of Devon's rarest birds, it was feeding (as the name suggests), by diving in to the aqua blue water. Every time it surfaced I snapped more pictures and finished up with very special images of one of the rarest birds I have ever seen. It dived again and then we saw what I thought was it again and I continued to photograph it and it wasnt until much later that I realised that this bird was in actual fact a Great Northern Diver.
It was a short, exciting trip and as we climbed out of the boat and back on to the breakwater, the other birders clustered around me to look at the pictures. It actually cost me £20 for these pictures and I have to say that it was well, well worth i. I have 1000's of pounds worth of camera stuff. I had made a big effort to drive down there so this was a small price to pay for this fantastic opportunity to get close to this very rare bird. Brilliant.
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