NATURE NOTES
I CARRIED out a charity walk during March. One of my favourite routes was the trail from Leek to Rudyard.
During the early spring it was a delight and showed the richness of local bird life.
I heard woodpeckers, saw buzzards, was observed by robins and witnessed nuthatches cheekily taking seed from a bridge wall. However, my favourite was the great crested grebe I saw regularly on the lake.
In breeding plumage both the male and female look very attractive with black crowns and manes. The way the feathers stick up are suggestive of a punk hair style.
It is a flamboyant bird known for its intricate courting display - the weed ceremony.
The birds take it very seriously and engage in a ritualistic display. Male and females swim slowly away from each other making shrill barking sounds before diving.
They re-emerge with weed in their bills, speed towards one another, and bring the display to an end by rising in the water, treading water frantically while rocking their heads from side to side. It is quite a sight.
They are attentive parents. The male equally plays its part in incubating the eggs and rearing the chicks which takes many weeks. Its flashy plumage was very nearly its downfall during the reign of Victoria when ladies took a shine to the chestnut colour and sable blacks of the grebes mantle, the ‘furs and tibbets’ as they were known by hatters.
The demand decimated the bird’s population and by the middle of the 19th century the grebe was close to extinction and down to only 40 pairs.
As it became rarer it faced another threat as it became valuable to taxidermists to sell on its remains to be exhibited by museums.
In 1889 a group of women gathered in Didsbury, near Manchester, to campaign against the persecution of birds, especially the grebe, and formed the Plumage League.
It was the forerunner of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds which is now one of the country’s biggest conservation organisations with a membership of more than a million.
The grebe’s numbers began to recover and now there are in excess of 10,000 breeding pairs in Britain.
One factor that assisted in the recovery in numbers after Second World War was the development of reservoirs.
An interesting by-product was the 1931 inquiry into the great crested grebe organised by anthropologist Tom Harrisson to examine how they had conserved.
It helped inspire him to set up Mass Observation, the influential organisation that charted social attitudes during the war. Harrisson felt that if it worked for grebe birds it also worked for people. He said: “You don’t ask a bird a question. You don’t try to interview it, do you?”