Great Crested Grebe – forty years ago in my nature notebooks

They have been mouldering in my loft for the last forty years but I’ve just got out my old pencil sketches of birds from before I was a teenager. Here’s a bird which was strange, exciting and terribly exotic to me as a child; a Great Crested Grebe:

Today I’m in Italy, walking around the Laguna di Orbetello, surrounded by Spoonbills, Flamingoes, Kingfishers and a distant Marsh Harrier. There’s one bird which really catches my eye though, it’s a Great Crested Grebe. Here are my photographs:

They are still exotic to me.

Their Italian name is Svasso. They are still exotic whatever their name.