Fleeting glimpses of a kingfisher by the river

I got up very early as I always do when we have a market stall, but it was very quiet again. We’ve been told the market will return to ‘normal’ at the end of this month with many more stalls, so hopefully it will bring the customers back. We’ve had a lot of visitors to the town and the local area in general and today I’ve had several good conversations about photography with people from Sussex, Kent and Southern Spain.

I left early as I had to get an MOT on our bigger car, which has already had a new battery and windscreen in the last weeks. I dropped it off at our very friendly garage and then walked along the canal to Capel’s Mill viaduct where the canal and the River Frome pass under its tall arches. Knowing I had an hour to wait I took my camera and set up shop opposite the site where a pair of kingfishers nest, and have brought up at least one brood this spring.

I waited in the gloom created by the trees overhanging the river banks and after ten minutes a blue streak flashed down past me and the nest and flew on round the bend. Of course I missed it until it was too far away to photograph, so I stayed in place and hoped for it to return, which it did only a few minutes later. This time a kingfisher flew upstream towards me and then dived into the undergrowth close to the nest site. I couldn’t see it for quite a time and gave up looking, and then suddenly saw a pattern in the mix of leaves, branches and earth outcropping from the vertical bank on the far side of the river. I thought then of one of my earlier conversations with a woman from Sussex who said she’d never seen a kingfisher. I’d explained where I shot the kingfisher on one of my cards we were discussing and said I would hope to see one whenever I went to its nest site. Now I was there and I suddenly ‘spotted’ the kingfisher on the branch in the gloom with a large minnow’s head sticking out of its mouth.

I watched it for about fifteen minutes hoping it would fly off to the nest, which it eventually did, after repositioning the fish in it mouth so that it pointed straight forward. Then it took off up to the nest about six feet away, which I did manage to capture one reasonable frame of. I’d set the ISO very high so the image isn’t ideal;.

Within a minute it flew out of the nest and headed straight downstream. I landed on a rock on the water’s edge and then took off to dive in to the water to apparently wash itself before flying back onto the rock. I gather their nests become very dirty as they are tunnels in the earth up to several feet long, so I’d noticed this behaviour on other days. 

It repeated the washing ‘dive’ twice more and then after a brief rest it took off and flew up and over a tree which has fallen across the river and then head over the bank towards the canal. My blip blipped is of its initial rise over the tree. to rise. As always I’m delighted to have been able to see such sights just down the road from home and less than 400 metres from the town centre.