images-naturally!: Life begins again on the river. Kingfishers 22.3.22

Tuesday, 22 March 2022

Life begins again on the river. Kingfishers 22.3.22

Kingfisher pair copulating

It's that time of the year when the days have started to lengthen & hormone levels rise and the birds start to think about nesting & egg laying and all the stress, strength & fortitude it takes to raise a family on the river. Amazingly for the kingfisher it'll probably be 2 families as they usually have 2 broods.

I got lucky this morning (although I'd like to think I got my timing right) the male bird had been excavating the nest burrow... see photo with mud on his beak. When he flew off upstream the female dropped onto the same sprig of riverside Alder. Not long later I heard the male bird calling in an excited manner and in the blink of an eye he was perched beside her and in another blink had started mating.

They mated twice inside of 15 minutes and after that he brought her a gift of what I'm pretty sure is an Emperor dragonfly larva. She struggled to get the insect down and took quite a while to swallow it. I've seen them catch dragonfly larva before but always in the past when the river was in flood & the water the colour of chocolate.

Not long after he returned again, this time with a fish, neatly presented to her head first so the fins and spines don't catch in her throat.

Later he caught a bullhead but she had retired to the nest burrow so he eventually flew off with it for self consumption I guess!

These photos were taken on private land and I hold a Natural England Schedule 1 licence for this species.

Here are just a few of the images I took this morning.

I hope to take many more as the spring & summer progress.