The male Kingfisher at the nest catches a big minnow.

Out at the Kingfisher nest site this evening it appeared to me that the youngsters that I had seen only a couple of days ago have now been driven from the territory. I had only been in the hide for a matter of minutes when I heard my first Kingfisher of the session. I heard a Kingfisher before I saw it, right opposite and just feet from the nest hole. It was the male and he was perched on the mud "boulders" that had tumbled in to the water. From time to time he called, I took this to be a call to let the female, perhaps sitting on eggs in the burrow, know that he was there. I had it in focus through my camera and after a second or two it flew up on to the the top of the bank. It made a dive but it wasn't successful the first time but on the next dive he was and the catch was a large juicy minnow.

I wondered what was going to happen, was the fish going to be fed to youngsters, taken in to the nest or fed to a female somewhere close by? It was a slightly disappointing outcome because he simple ate it!

As it happened I didn't see any comings and goings from the nest tonight, I am assuming that the female stayed in the nest for the entire 2 hours that I watched.

4 responses to “The male Kingfisher at the nest catches a big minnow.”

Alan Powers

June 16, 2013 at 4:56 pm

It is astounding to see their color in the habitat. They stand out, don’t blend in, except maybe while fishing? That must be their
more vulnerable time, though I don’t know what predators would take them.

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Charles Fleming

June 16, 2013 at 8:32 pm

Thanks for taking an interest Alan. They are predated by birds of prey, Sparrowhawk, Peregrine Falcon for example. Also they will be taken by stoat and weasel. Mink, a non native species in the UK is a particularly vicious predator which is known to cause havoc to Kingfishers even entering nest burrows and taking not only the young birds but any adult that is in he nest incubating.

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Alan Powers

November 6, 2013 at 7:52 pm

Thanks, Charles. I have remote familiarity with mink–have seen two in my life, one in Maine, at Moxie Falls when I was 16, one down here in
coastal Massachusetts, dead, again by a stream. So it makes sense a river-attending mink might come across Kingfishers.
By the way, I’ve never checked whether you have the Kingbird, a species of flycatcher, that is known for its bravery, afraid of nothing: Native Americans called them the Sachem bird. I’ve only once seen one fly perfectly vertically, and pretty fast. No wonder they have no fear.

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Charlie

November 6, 2013 at 8:20 pm

Hello again Allan, no we don’t have Kingbird in the UK. I was in Florida in September and I saw my first Kingbird there, although I have seen them previously in Belize.

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