Kingfishers
18th March, Stamford, Tom’s Hide
It was a 6:30 am meet at Tom‘s Pond Hide set up. I arrived early and was the third person to arrive with the other two having already walked down to the Hide and grabs the best two spots. This slightly annoyed me. However, my compatriots were very pleasant and knew what they were doing and we soon got talking. The set up was the same as last year with no major changes that I could see. We still had the bucket remotely controlled by the electric drill winding it up and down out of the water. As soon as Tom had sourced the fish and left, the male and female , Kingfisher appeared immediately. The male fished and sat with the female on the branch, both of them turned away from us and passed the fish from one together. This was the only time this ritual was seen during the time I was there. A female appeared once or twice the male returned four or five times. The last sighting I saw was at round about 1 pm and at 4 pm without a further sighting I had left. This was consistent with my other , Kingfisher experiences this year That there is a lot of early morning activity which tails off and by midday or early afternoon you then into two or three hours between visits. On the photography side I very soon appreciated how tricky getting the diving shot is and that I cannot rely on my camera set up to Focus in the moment. Although other manufacturers set up shoot alongside will use the auto focus to catch the diving Kingfisher my Fujifilm does not respond that quickly. I was having to pre-focus on a point where I thought they would dive into the water and use a sufficiently high depth of field to cover a margin error. This did work and I did get some good shots. I do have a further visit planned on April 4 where the weather forecast I believe is looking good. That will be my last , Kingfisher session this year as it will be my fifth. I’m really hoping to see the courtship rituals this time around.
