Kingfisher

We took U and S to Fairhaven water gardens today, and had a lovely walk around, with a stop in both bird hides (where we saw lots of birds including birds which could be either marsh tits or willow tits - according to Google, they are impossible to tell apart by anything other than their call, and since I wasn't concentrating on that at the time, I have no idea if or what they were calling).  See first extra.  There were also cute rats playing around on the ground, and one raiding the bird feeder (second extra).

But any other photos were relegated to extras by the fact that we saw, and I managed a photo of, a kingfisher.  As we were leaving this morning, we discussed the pros and cons of bothering with binoculars, and W and I decided not to bother.  Fortunately S took hers.  I also decided to only take the baby camera.  

We were standing on a jetty overlooking the Broad when I saw a bird flying low across the water.  At first I thought it was a swallow or similar, but then it perched, and I realised it was a kingfisher.  We shared S's binoculars to each get a good view of it, and I was fortunate enough to be watching as it landed with a fish in its beak!  I've never seen a kingfisher perched before, only ever as a flash of blue streaking across my field of vision.

I took a number of photos, but it was some distance away, and the baby camera only has 20X zoom, so the photo above has also been heavily cropped.

It was a lovely day - the weather was much better than forecast, and I feel so lucky to have seen such a beautiful bird. 

I have also back blipped for yesterday should you be interested in seeing it.