The Slavonian Grebe
With the return of darkness as the clocks go back there are some compensations. The autumnal migrations bring exciting sights such as the winter thrushes stripping the berries from cotoneaster and pyracanthus, fifty Whooper swans on stubble by the A9 at Kindallachan and geese returning in their thousands. Let us hope they do not bring avian influenza with them.
A particularly pleasing sight were some unusual grebes. The slavonian grebe breeds from Iceland, and Scandinavia to northern Scotland and migrate as far south as the Black and Caspian Seas. The Slavonian Grebe was first recorded in Britain in 1796. It is a migrant, breeding in the circumpolar Arctic with a few pairs in Scotland where it was first recorded as nesting in 1908. Scotland still holds the entire British breeding population of Slavonian Grebes. This population slowly increased, and is still doing so, rising to an estimated eighty pairs of breeding birds which have been recorded as far South as the Loch of the Lowes. As many as 450 birds winter in Scotland, mostly in sheltered coastal water and they occasionally appear on open inland waters. |
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Also known as the Horned grebe, the standard name comes from Sclavonia (an obsolete form of Slavonia) which is a region bounded by the rivers Danube, Sava and Drava in south-east Europe. To science, the bird is Podiceps auritus. Podiceps comes from Latin podicis, the anus, and pes the foot because grebes have their legs at the rear of heir bodies and auritus is also Latin, having large or outstanding ears. The Gaelic name, Spàgritòn, reflects the inelegant Latin for it is derived from ? Spàgair: one who walks awkwardly and ton: anus or breech. Thus “Arsefoot”, that can hardly be said to do justice to a particularly beautiful grebe which, in breeding plumage, has a splendid marmalade coloured tuft behind its ears. They are most likely to be seen in remote Scottish lochs where they breed and where their distinct breeding plumage, and a courtship behaviour, like that of the Great Crested Grebe, make them easy to identify.
In winter the black and white facial pattern recalls the black-necked grebe and both the ruddy duck and the female smew. The shape of the head of the black-necked and slavonian grebes is quite different: the former has a rounded head with a steep forehead and, though the bill is horizontal the sharp angle of the lower mandible and steep forehead give the bird a distinctly pert turned-up-nose appearance. The slavonian has a flat, sharper looking head with the angle of the forehead nearer to that of the bill. The head patterning, and shorter necks and longer tails, of the ruddy duck and smew should allow correct diagnosis.
Audubon, in his Birds of America, wrote of the Slavonian grebe “excepting a species of hawk, I know of no other bird that has the eye of such colour, the iris being externally of a vivid red with an inner circle of white which gives it a very singular appearance”. To which Nethersole-Thompson in Highland Birds (1971) added: “No birds are more lovely and confiding. Look at their red-brown necks and upper breasts and their gorgeous titian red-gold head tufts and cold, red-currant eyes.”
I was lucky enough to see one of these magnificent birds in full breeding regalia on Loch Freuchie a summer or two back and in the last week have seen a pair on Loch Tummel and a single bird on Loch Leven. They are sober creatures in winter but still a great sight and bring cheer to the darkening days.
© Robin Hull
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