Next up in our ‘The story so far’ series is our Kingfisher family. These guys were very busy excavating their nest cavity which we blogged about on the 24th March. Since then we haven’t mentioned them much and that is because we haven’t been sure what’s been happening! We are currently of the opinion that they are sitting on eggs. Sightings are currently few and far between which as I said with the Marsh harriers is a good thing. The only sightings we’ve had of them are when they swap over incubation but this is very brief and only happens every three or four hours. This has been going on for a couple of weeks which should mean that eggs are about to hatch. They could possibly be hatching as I type!
We are currently asking visitors to Radipole to watch out for any food being taken into the nest chamber as this would mean we have baby Kingfishers, so for a chance to be the first to witness this head up to the hide! When chicks hatch they are fed small aquatic insects and tiny fish so food at first might not be too obvious but as they grow larger fish need to be fed. Something to look out for is fish being carried head first which means they will be feeding other kingfishers. The fins on a fish all slope backwards which would make eating a fish tail first very tricky!