Hi to all
I am a keen birdwatcher, with emphasis on the kingfisher (alcedo atthis). On Monday 5th April 2010 I was lucky to see both the female and male kingfishers from the kingfisher hide at Rye Meads. However, they visited separately, with about three hours between each sighting! Great patience required! I managed to take a picture of the male KF with my ordinary camera, which you can see here as my avatar.
As luck would have it, there was another photographer there who took MUCH better images than me. You can see three lovely photos of the male KF (taken on Monday afternoon) at:
http://www.iananddot.org/
If you scroll down that page, you'll see a link to the kingfisher page. There are also lots of other great bird photos, many of which were taken at Rye Meads. I think the birding community if full of lovely, generous people!
Kingfisher Fan
Ps: If anyone has problems finding the KF pics, just go here:
http://www.iananddot.org/swifts/kingfisher.htm
Think you'll have to copy and paste the url into your browser.
I'm in Scotland at the moment and had a lovely afternoon out yesterday, walking along a river. I was lucky to see a kingfisher whizz past, back and forth, FIVE times (over the course of four hours). I'm pretty sure it was just ONE bird, but hey, what do I know?! Incidentally, after the last sighting, a cyclist stopped to ask me "Do you know if there are kingfishers along this river?" "Yes", I replied: "You just missed one!"
To cap it all, I got home last night to find that a lovely guy from Finland (who was visiting Rye Meads when I was there on April 5th in the Kingfisher Hide), had emailed me three of his photos from that day. They depict the male on a branch to the left of the hide, and also on a post just outside the nesting bank. How generous and kind the birding community is.
Will be back at Rye Meads in early May. Can't wait! In the meantime, if anyone visits, please let us know all your bird sightings. I do love all birds.......just a bit potty about the kingfishers. But you all know that by now!
Hello!
How are you?
Ooh have you been enjoying Scotland? Sounds lovely! Im jealous of your views of kingfisher! Sounds like there was probably a nest some where near! Teehee probably the most common birdwatchers phrase "you should have been here 5 minutes ago!" :)
That is very nice of that guy to send you the pictures! That is the nice thing about birdwatching, you can talk to complete strangers and people are so nice and friendly!
The kingfishers here seem to be doing their thing, not sure if they are on eggs yet, no one has sat in the hide all day and watched.
Kingfishers are great, so no suprise you love them! :)