Quest for Great Northern Diver at Budworth Mere 25th January 2013
I had been reading about the appearance of a juvenile Great Northern Diver that was showing at Budworth Mere so we headed off there on a cold, cold morning. When we arrived there we went to the main hide where we could see that the mere was substantially frozen over. We decided that there wasn’t much chance of seeing the bird from here – despite it showing right in front of the hide a few days before – so we walked down the path past the small boathouse looking for some open water.
As we walked along the path we came across a couple of birders who said that they had just seen the diver ten minutes before but a Great Black-backed Gull had bothered it and it had submerged and had not been seen to re-appear since. We spent a bit of time at a couple of positions along the side of the mere but could only see other birds of which there was no shortage. These included large numbers of Canada Geese and Cormorants and smaller numbers of Mute Swans, Wigeon, Tufted Duck, Goldeneye and Mallard. After a while we decided to leave it for a spell and go off to the woodland hide where we saw the usual Great Spotted Woodpecker – a male drumming a bit – and a range of Tits and a Nuthatch.
As we were sitting there a chap came up and we fell into conversation with him and he said he had just seen the diver a moment ago, so we sped down to the waters edge again but I think he had mistaken a windswept Cormorant as there were other birders there and they hadn’t seen anything. We remained for a bit longer but after an hour and a half it still hadn’t show and the snow was starting to fall more heavily. We gave up and returned to the car. As we walked back we saw a pair of Jays which was nice but hardly a consolation. A view of the dive would have made it my 200th British bird.