Disappointment for birders as Lincolnshire lake's rare grebe performs overnight vanishing act

 

There was disappointment yesterday for birders who had hoped to glimpse a rare Slavonian grebe that spent Saturday on the lake in the country park in Cleethorpes, near Grimsby, on the North East Lincolnshire coast. Unless it was skulking among the reeds, the bird had moved on, probably  overnight. A cold- weather visitor from Greenland (or Russia), this member of the grebe family has vivid orange head feathers in its summer breeding season plumage, but in winter it is more sombre looking - a blend of black, grey and white. However, it retains a distinctive bright pink eye, almost of jewel-like intensity. This bird was probably  one of fewer than a score  that were recorded  last week  in the whole of Britain. The species is reckoned to threatened with extinction,  30 per cent decline in its global population having been noted over the past three decades.