I dedicate this entry to my really good friends Claire and Paul who share my love of Kingfishers and Brass Bands… an odd combination, not Paul and Claire but the birds and bands!

I had another "no-show" this morning, who knows why he had temporarily stopped visiting my purposefully placed branches? I knew he was only yards upstream because I saw him several times and even though I expected him to come he still didn't. But,eh…… this is a wild bird after all!   I have my 85 year old mother to entertain at the moment  and to be honest it is cramping my style somewhat, but mustn't complain too much. My long suffering wife Jenny took her off shopping in the early afternoon and, finding myself free, guess where I was by 2.45?  I saw him as soon as I got there, and I knew by his beviour, that he was fishing. As I scrambled over the branches I could see that he had been using them recently by the fresh bird lime in the mud…. a real give away. Then, and it happens like this sometimes, he was in front of me with a fish in less than a minute, so quickly, I had hardly finished concealing myself. I calmly photographed him in quite subdued light and got quite a few, half decent shots. Glory of glories, after he had dealt with his 9 Spine Stickleback – (Pungitius pungitius), he did his bathing thing and I almost got a really good photo(see above). But here he is eating his fish.

After he had eventually swallowed the fish, and it always happens this way, he turned his head and was stock still for a second or two, and then he opened his mouth to properly get his meal down. I snapped the shutter and got this lovely photo which is so full of character. This could be presumed to be an aggressive posture to another Kingfisher but this is not the case.

Preening, scratching and cleaning of the feet always follows on from a good meal a,d it gives a good chance for some nice photos. I think I captured one here that is really nice. You can see how he is running the wing feathers (primaries), through his beak to get everything back in place.

What a smashing bird he is and can you believe that I can get such good views of him? Just have a good look at his feet, can you see how bright they are becoming?  When I first saw him last September, his feet were smoky and blackish red, a sure indication that he was in his first Autumn. Now spring is just around the corner he is coming in to breeding condition and very soon will be off to meet up with the "girl" downstream. I am seeing her constantly now but she is much more difficult to predict. I have seen her very near to the his territory so I would guess that he is more than tolerating her. It will be more than nice if I manage to see some interaction between the two of them.

On a walk down the stream, I bumped in to a lady with a nice Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Both she and her husband have always taken a big interest in what I am doing. I was able to show her and her two friends  the bird. This was really nice because I also gave them some tips on how to spot him. Their reaction on then seeing him, quite closely as it happens was very satisfying. It made me realise how people love to see a Kingfisher but rarely do as they told me that it was the best views of a KF they had ever had.