Farmoor Grebes

28 Dec - Farmoor reservoir has an excellent track record when it comes to rare Grebes, and I’ve seen the five regular Grebe species there. However, I’ve only seen one Slavonian Grebe there, which is probably rarest of the five inland. So a Farmoor beckoned as a winter-plumage Slavonian is currently in residence at Farmoor. I visited on a cloudy, fairly calm day, incidentally quite good conditions for this bird in its monochrome winter plumage. The bird was fairly close in on F2 but was keeping close to the floating bales giving a difficult background for photography. The ubiquitous Great Crested and Little Grebes present as always, also an Aythya hybrid which has features of both Greater and Lesser Scaup.