Outdoors: The grebe, once endangered thanks to the fashion industry, is thriving again

More times than not, my attempts to plan ahead so as to get a good view of an animal or bird ends in failure.

There have been numerous occasions where I have sat on a knobbly and rather painful tree branch above a fox earth or badger sett, only for the animal never to materialise. But on the plus side, this makes the successes all the sweeter, and among my most memorable encounters was getting up close to a Slavonian grebe, one of our more unusual and colourful waterbirds.

I had been tipped-off about their presence on a small lochan in Moray, and although on my first visit I could clearly see the grebes through binoculars, I was keen to get even nearer so I could take some photographs. I spied a small patch of thickly planted young pines that stretched down to one part of the shore, and this seemed the ideal place to hide with my camera in the hope that a bird would swim close by.

And that is exactly what happened a short time later – a moment that was all the more satisfying given that the grebe never once detected my presence.

I have long since mislaid the photographic print I took, but I can still vividly recall the astounding plumage of this rare Slavonian grebe, with its black cheeks offset by golden ear tufts and russet body providing a wonderful contrast against the silvery glass-like sheen of the lochan. It was a stunning bird, but despite this colour and vibrancy, our grebes often go largely unnoticed, having the capacity to blend and merge into their environment.

Our largest species is the great-crested grebe, which is distinguished in spring and summer by its slender white neck and chestnut frills on either side of the head and small dark crest. In Victorian times the colourful plumage was much prized for fashionable clothing – in particular the satin breast or “grebe fur”. The feathers were also sought after by anglers for fly-tying. All this, combined with the activities of egg collectors, resulted in persecution on such a scale that the UK population was almost wiped out. However, this was one cloud that most definitely had a silver lining as the plight of the great-crested grebe led directly to the founding of the RSPB in 1889, which was undoubtedly one of the key landmarks in the historical development of the international conservation movement.

Thankfully, the great-crested grebe population has now recovered, although it is still a relatively scarce nester in Scotland because of its dependence on shallow, fertile lowland lochs and reservoirs, combined with at least some patches of reeds or other marginal waterside growth for nesting. One of the principal strongholds today is Loch Leven in Kinross-shire, but it is also found on many other suitable water-bodies throughout central and southern Scotland, with a few outlying populations in the north-east.

A most endearing trait of the great-crested grebe is the elaborate and rather comical courtship behaviour that involves frantic chases and ceremonial displays where the male and female birds face up to each other, rapidly shaking and bowing their heads. The display often involves the collection of pondweed in their sharp bills, which is then shown off to each other like some prize trophy.

The rest of our breeding grebes are smaller in size, the most common being the dabchick, which is a delightful little bird found on many of our lochs and large ponds, and which has a distinctive high-pitched whinnying call. Much rarer is the black-necked grebe, which is similar in appearance to the Slavonian grebe, although its golden tuft of head feathers has a more fanned-out appearance. It is an incredibly fickle bird, inhabiting a breeding loch for many years, then suddenly abandoning it altogether for no apparent reason.

The Slavonian grebe, too, is a rather scarce nester, found in parts of the Highlands, and currently the most reliable place to see them without fear of disturbance is the RSPB reserve at Loch Ruthven in Inverness-shire. It is also a rather mysterious species, with the population over the last century or so showing unpredictable fluctuations. The peculiar natural history of these grebes underlines how much we still have to learn about our native fauna, and why we should never take the presence of any creature for granted, no matter how common.