There is a little reserve down the road where kingfishers are evident - I had been going down quite a bit in the hopes of the Kingfisher landing on a perch right close to the hide.
I sat for 2 hours with pretty much nothing there other than this mallard.
Finally I saw a little egret fly nearby into a river outside of the reserve, so I hopped out of the hide and over to the river in the hopes of getting a shot of it.
It actually ended up flying back to where the hide is - so I ran back, happy with my good fortune!
It was well close to the hide, so I got some decent photos!
Luckily, while I was there the kingfisher turned up, and was very tame - coming extremely close, even landing for minutes at a time on the perch I wanted it to!
This one (below) is uncropped with a 400mm lens (+1.6x crop sensor)!
It finally got chased off when the female came back, but I went home happy!
Thanks for looking!
Regards
Benji
Mr Kes said:Superb shots there Benji. Lucky to get the kingfisher. Did you set your own perches or did it come to land on natural perches? I must set up my hide one of these days by the pond. Not many perches for it around the edge so I might need to make a couple. Lovely to see as well as the little egret.
The perches are set up by the boxmoor trust (the owners of the nature reserve). All it is is a private reserve which has a small pond (used to be a watercress bed) with a hide - kingfishers nest during the summer, but it is best for photography during the winter as in the summer it gets all overgrown and they can't cut it down because of not being able to get too close to where they nest!