I hope you are not fed up with Kingfisher photos on the Blog, but a Blog is an online diary and a way of recording my sightings which at the moment is mainly Kingfishers. Today's photos are the best I have taken and I am thrilled with them. It was a hard job getting myself going this morning, it really was, but I am so glad that I made the tiny bit of effort needed.  It was a fabulous early morning with, glory of glories…. a blue sky and a low sun that was casting an almost orange light on everything it touched. It was only a matter of minutes when I saw the Kingfisher, upstream from the hide and obviously fishing in the intent way that he does when he first gets going in the morning.  As is usual and what I expected when he is hunting, he flew back towards me with a fish in his beak. Instead of landing in front of me, he went past and I wondered where he could have possibly taken it. I needn't have worried because within 30 seconds or so there he was, right in front of me with the biggest Stickleback I have ever seen and was he struggling with it!  No matter how hard he tried he couldn't get it down and he bashed and bashed it on his branch so conveniently placed for the job by me, right in front of the hide. Eventually he managed it and then he took a while before he left the perch and flew downstream. I would have been happy with that, but there was so much more to come.

It took 20 minutes but he was back! I would save hard for the tickets if it were a show because to see him zooming towards me with a fish is simply thrilling. This time his fish was normal size and he dealt with it very quickly, and now he had had enough. 

Here he is with his massive Stickleback, I am doing some research to name the species of fish. 

As is usual after he has finished hunting he takes care of his "domestics". He has a really good dunk and dip and then preens and scratches to keep his feathers in tip-top condition. This is always special because  when this is taking place I know that he is going to be with me for 5 minutes or even more. I have rarely had the combination of this bathing behaviour very close and good light so I made the best of it and tried really hard to get photos of him in-flight. I managed a few and one was just about!