5 September 2015. Broadlands, Hampshire, UK. The Common Kingfisher may be common, but it is rarely seen well and, if at all, is usually more of an inference, suspected from a flash of iridescent metallic blue following the course of a small river. Such was my view of one today, and I count it as lucky enough and good enough to have been my bird of the day.
Following a day of busy tourism, we needed a bit of downtime, certainly I did because I’m the only driver, the car is new to me and the roads very, very challenging. We walked for a long while following a hiking trail through quiet farmlands bordering the River Test until we found a quiet place by a small tributary stream to sit and daydream. Some of us chose to read or knit; I looped my camera and binoculars over my neck and watched this soft watercolour landscape for whoever or whatever might show itself.
There were un-namable fish in the river, the occasional farm tractor and a solitary hiker determined to cover ten miles by late lunchtime. I could hear, but not see, Robins, Great Tits and Wrens in the dense, fruit-loaded Hawthorn, Blackberry and Elderberry hedgerows. A Grey Heron hauled itself lugubriously from one unseen river bend to another and a Kestrel hovered in the wind over sheep-dotted fields.
As I leaned on a bridge railing, looking deep into the urgently flowing waters laced with waving waterweed, the Kingfisher must have passed through the low arch under my feet. One moment it was there and the next it was just a dazzle of shiny blue, bright under the overhanging trees, chasing the upstream.
Unlike the conspicuous, clattering and attention-grabbing antics of North America’s Belted Kingfisher, Europe’s Common Kingfisher is half the size and to all intents and purposes silent. Decades ago, I knew a very accomplished birder who came upon the territory of a pair of Common Kingfishers and with great patience managed to photograph them both at rest and plunging for minnows. Those were great shots even though it was in the era of black and white photography.