I really enjoyed my 3 hours at the nest site this morning. Its hard to describe how wonderful it is to see a Kingfisher even when you are seeing one for the thousandth time. The sudden appearance of exotic bright blue as it arrives to then disappear a second later in to the burrow is a thrill, time after time. This last few days its been fascinating to watch and then occasionally be able photograph them emerging from the burrow and then splashing in to the water to bathe on the wing. This is a fascinating aspect of their behaviour, it's instinctive of course and I have seen other Kingfishers doing this previously. As they leave the burrow they fly low over the water and then dip in flight a couple of times, without even slowing their speed. I tried to capture this today by trying to predict where this dunking was going to happen. I almost managed it on a couple of occasions.
Yesterday I had said that we had a visit on average, 1 visit every 16 minutes but today the average was one visit every 23 minutes. If I used the same criteria that I had used yesterday to try and estimate how many youngsters in the nest, I have arrived at only 3 youngsters. Best wait and see I think. One interesting fact though was a wait for almost an hour before I saw my first bird today. Its worth noting that usually (but not always), the arrival at the nest with prey is announced by calling. As I sit there quietly without a bird, suddenly there is calling and then quiet again. Before I can count to 60 the bird will glide across the river and in to the nest. I have a strong suspicion this calling bird is the male whereas when a bird just arrives unannounced, that is the female. Generally the female is much more calm and quieter about everything she does.
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