Time Spent with the King

Having sat down tonight with the family out at karate, I thought I would go through some dragonfly shots that I had not looked at yet. Whilst on the memory stick I come across some Kingfisher shots taken at Grove Ferry in August 2013 and couldn't resist doing a few up. This bird is just simply a stunner and with some fantastic colours sometimes looks out of place in this country. It was this time last year that I remembered spending a lot of time in my summer holidays sat in the Feast hide waiting for the Kingfisher to arrive on the posts outside the hide. Sometimes I would sit for hours without a single sighting but sometimes on arrival the Kingfisher would already be sitting waiting and I would have to try my best to get into position quietly and lift up the window without making a sound. Invariably the Kingfisher would be gone with all this fuss. More often than not, I would be sitting patiently and hear the call coming down the channel and there it would appear in all its glory. Sometimes staying for just a few seconds but on a few occasions when the hide was quiet, it would fish happily for 10/15 minutes allowing many shots to be taken. I think in the end the local Kingfishers got used to the shutters going off on the camera. The hours spent studying these fascinating birds paid off with a selection of shots that I am still very proud of. No doubt I can probably do better and hope if the channel is cleared of weed and the reeds are cut allowing the posts to be viewable once again from the Feast hide at Grove Ferry, myself and others can return to watch and photograph surely one of Britain's best birds.

Kingfisher