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THE RED-THROATED DIVER IN ITS 



BREEDING-HAUNTS. 



BY 



E. L. TURNER, Hon. Mem. B.O.U. 

 (Plates 12-15.) 



We can hardly imagine a greater contrast than that 

 which exists between an English hedgerow in early 

 June and the haunt of the Red-throated Diver. In 

 the one : 



All little birds that are 



How they seem to fill the sea and air 



With their sweet jargoning. 



And if the birds are silent, there is the hum of insect- 

 life, and the thousand and one indefinable sounds 

 which make summer. 



But the locality chosen by the Red -throated Diver 

 {Gavia stellata) for the up-bringing of its young, is 

 remote from man, and pervaded by a silence often so 

 profound and absolute, that the sudden rattle of a 

 focal-plane shutter startles the photographer as much, 

 and perhaps more, than it does the bird. After hours 

 of long waiting, when one is tired and dispirited, 

 the wild call of the Red-throated Diver is enough 

 to maka one's flesh creep : it resembles the cry of a 

 little child in pain, but is more akin maybe to the wail 

 of a lost spirit, echoing and re-echoing round the 

 lonely hills. 



I made two unsuccessful attempts at photographing 

 this species ; the first bird was shy and refused to sit 

 for me. On May 26th I waited nearly three hours in 

 a hole two feet square, cut in the peat and covered with 

 a tiny tent. The water gradually oozed through till 

 up to my knees, and soon rendered the situation 

 impossible. On June 3rd I tried again, but waited in 

 vain for seven hours. The nest was on the edge of 

 a deep and dark little mountain-tarn above the main 

 loch ; from my peep-hole I could see several Greater 

 Black-backed Gulls brooding on the moor, and between 



