Last week I visited a small lake in search of a geocache. I found the cache and in the process I scared two small chicks that had been hiding on the water’s edge close to the cache. Further out on the lake I saw an adult bird, but of course I had neither a camera or binoculars with me so I couldn’t say for sure what the bird was. Judging by the shape though, I thought it was a red-throated diver. And assuming that those two chicks belonged to the adult bird, then these birds would be around here for a long time to come.
Today the conditions were right so I drove to the lake, equipped with mosquito repellent (it was much needed!) and the Mega-Tamron. And oh joy, I found a pair of divers calmly sleeping, totally ignoring me while I was getting ready to shoot! I started walking up the shore to see if I could find the chicks. I had gone maybe 10-20 metres when one of the divers started swimming towards me. I figured that I must be getting close to the chicks but the adults didn’t appear stressed so I went a bit further. Soon I had both adults swimming parallel to me and the reason was confirmed, one chick emerged from hiding. And sadly, only one – what happened to the other one I saw last week?
I didn’t want to risk causing any stress to the family so I left. But the adults behaved very calm through the whole thing, all they did was to make sure that the chick would move to the opposite side of the lake and then they swam away from it again, keeping a close eye on me but never engaging in any behaviour that would have told me that they considered me a serious threat. So I think I will visit the lake again and hopefully get to see the young one grow up!
