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Monday 16 May 2016

Kingfisher - Odd Behaviour

Something I have never seen before. I was stood about a 100 metres away from a river (Castor Mill for info of local birding colleagues) that runs across open land. At the time I was observing Mallards (Two males and one female) taking off, circling around and landing again on the river. Unfortunately I was also looking towards the sun at the time. As I was trying to shoot a few flight shots of the Mallards I noticed in the frame a bird silhouette which I recognised. What was unusual though was that the bird was about 50 metres up in the air and appeared stationary and in the hover for about 4 seconds. It  was not directly above the water and then moved along a little and repeated the hover. It then disappeared from my view due to the bright sunlight. I review the shots on the camera and confirmed that it was indeed a Kingfisher.

This below is the sequence of images I took. Due to the distance and direction of the sun the images are cropped and lack detail, but you can clearly see that it is a Kingfisher.









20 comments:

  1. Roy, it's always an intriguing and privileged experience to see nature doing something 'out of the norm' Perhaps it has been watching the local Kestrel and thought 'that looks easy...I could do that'?...[;o)

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    1. Thanks Trevor, I bet the Kestrel isn't going to try some of the Kingfisher tricks though.{:))

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  2. Vau, onneksi olkoon! Mahtava näky.

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  3. Amusante cette série Roy, pas commune en tout cas !
    Bises

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  4. Flying fish? What remarkable behaviour! Send that to Springwatch and see if Mr Packham knows anything

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    1. No need Simon, mu learned friend Amanda Peters has sorted it.

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  5. it is pretending it is a Hummingbird Roy!! it was wonderful to get this sequence of images.

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  6. Had a look Roy and there has been a few records of Kingfishers hovering while hunting, great capture..
    Amanda xx

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  7. How fascinating and great that you caught these images.

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  8. Very interesting behaviour Roy, I have seen Kingfishers hover like this before though only usually only a few feet above the water. They never do it for long and always look a little awkward when doing it, and usually return to a nearby perch for a rest before doing it all over again.

    Excellent sequence of photos by the way :-)

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    1. Thanks David. It was definitely a first for me.

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  9. wow...you got some great shots of the unexpected. It looks like a giant hummingbird. I don't see too many kingfishers so I don't know much about their behavior.

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