While Great crested grebes and Little grebes are resident birds in the lakes and rivers of my local area and always a delight to watch, it’s particularly nice to see some of their more exotic cousins. This year, in January, we had two of these rare visitors.

First up was the lovely little Red-necked grebe, shown above, that I blogged about on 18 January, and, while that beauty was still present on Cardiff’s northern reservoir, another grebe turned up, this time a Black-necked grebe, pictured below, in Cardiff Bay (Another rare grebe, 24 January). I’m hoping we’ll see more of these grebes during the coming months of winter.