The Crow family are highly intelligent creatures. Although they normally avoid human contact they can usually be approached by using a vehicle as a hide. In Scotland last month we got reasonably close to several Hooded Crows but it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. The bird that shouldn’t have been easy was the Black throated Diver we encountered at the side of an ‘A’ road casually fishing a few metres away in a loch. These are normally shy birds of remote highland waters or the open sea but this individual was keen on giving us all close views as we passed in the vehicle*
*All species of diver on the British List are schedule one species and therefore may not be photographed at or close to the nest without a licence.
Letter From Norfolk 
Wow! That’s an amazing pic of a black-throated diver, given that it was spontaneous and not staked out from a hide. That’s part of the joys of wildlife watching, I guess: you never know what is going to turn up. Well done.
Malcolm
Thanks Malcolm – we were just lucky. Although we had some good sets of eyes on the tour. We had already seen a pair of Black Throated Divers earlier in the week which we viewed at a respectable distance of around half a mile or more, so it was nice to see one up close. We also had Red throated and Great Northern’s too, as well as many other birds.