Already,  and its only 1120,  I have had a wonderful. beautiful Kingfisher encounter of the highest order!!!!! I have a plan for the rest of the day but before I left I just thought i would go down to the Brook for a while and see what was happening. I didn't see a  Kingfisher yesterday.  Has she departed? Thinking that the light would be wrong  this morning I went with just the idea that I might see her and then I would know. I arrived at 1030 and settled back comfortably in the hide that had undergone some refurb yesterday.  It's now a bit more user friendly and easier to get in to even though it's cramped and you share with a few Harvestmen arachnids and a wasps nest just by the entrance……. not good if you have suffered a full anaphylactic shock from wasp stings as I have, It's only a matter of time befog another I am sure.  Hope I get to casualty in time like  before.  Anyway, it's sunny and warm, balmy would describe it. I am thinking, "it can't get better than this" when it did……. she arrived. It was 1040!   I heard a splash to my left, it could only be one thing, and there she was. She immediately flew up to the new perch I had placed for her and posed magnificently as you can see. Then off she went back to the branch at water level where she had been before. She did a few dives for a wash and then left again………. another wow is in order I feel!

I went back to the brook this evening armed with two cameras. I wanted to post some images that showed the environment that the Kingfisher live in. In this picture you can see down the brook, just as I could, a little orange speck which is in fact a Kingfisher. 

She dived to catch a fish and then flew towards me with it and lands on the perch.

Then in this picture below, you can see her with a fish and to the right a ripple which she has just made when she caught this minnow. The dark patch to the bottom of the image is my  other camera and it's 300mm lens poking through the hide..

So then after a while, she caught another minnow and landed in front of me. In fact almost too close because I could only just about focus on her with  the the 300 lens, she was just too close!

 

It was already quite late in the day and the sun was very low in the sky. The light was wonderful and eventually she dealt with the fish and settled down in the very late evening sun. I took a lovely image of her which, because of the light is different.