Delights of the thrilling divers
The yodelling song of the great northern diver, in harmony with howling wolves, is the iconic sound of the wilderness.
Echoing through dense taiga forest or across vast tundra wastes, the haunting duets can last throughout the night and be heard from distances of 10 miles.
Hollywood film makers have been so enchanted they have spliced the natural chorus into the soundtrack of many a blockbuster, sometimes to hilarious effect.
Divers in full cry dubbed into plots set in tropical jungles deserve blooper status.
That said, enjoying the arias for real should headline bucket list dreams.
My one and only experience came some 20 years ago in Canada’s Algonquin Provincial Park. The memory still produces goosebumps. Here in the UK, mid-january is the best time to encounter great northern divers, with an estimated 4,000 birds gracing our coastlines or large inland reservoirs each winter. I will be keeping an eye on the Rare Bird Alert website in coming days to plan my annual homage, with Rutland Water or Grafham Water likely venues to watch divers cruising with all the majesty of hunter-killer submarines.
Although not singing or in their chequerboard breeding plumage, the cormorant-sized divers still manage to thrill watchers by submerging for ages in pursuit of a fish dinner.
Great northern divers arriving in Britain hail from Iceland and Greenland – and although some occasionally spend the summer here, there has only ever been one “confirmed” nesting, and that was in a story written by Arthur Ransome in 1947.
Great Northern? is the 12th and last novel in the Swallows and Amazons series and is set in the Hebrides, pitching Ransome’s band of young heroes against a heartless collector trying to get his hands on a precious brood of diver eggs.
North American ornithologists are currently reviewing the names of birds honouring dubious historical figures.
If any bird deserves a moniker makeover then it is the great northern diver, which is saddled with the derogatory title of “common loon” in Canada and the USA.
Watch them cruising with all the majesty of hunter-killer submarines