The king of birds

Image by SteveB! via Flickr

A sense of anticipation hung in the air at the Kingfisher hide at Rye Meads yesterday. The half a dozen people in there exchanged whispers - and sandwiches - while glued to the sand bank a few metres across the water to our left. And then it happened in a flash - a kingfisher shot out of one of the holes, straight up and over the foliage across the water...and it was gone. The shutters went off but there was no chance of getting a picture.

We waited another ten minutes and were rewarded. Back through the same space came another kingfisher - the female, I was told, as she has a red beak, the male's is black. Happily, she landed on the the pole metres from the nest and sat there for a good ten seconds or so. It gave us all a good chance for photographs or in my case, just to get a close look through the binoculars at my very favourite bird.

I waited another half hour, all of us hoping she would come back out or that the male would return, but eventually I gave up.

The other hides were also fruitful. There were tufted ducks, coots with their chicks, a coromorant, a common tern, a flock of black-headed gulls and a grey heron that sat for a good hour at least on the top of a low tree by the water (I saw it on the way to the Kingfisher hide and the way back).

I'll be back to check on the kingfishers in a couple of weeks time.