Kingfisher Time !

Pennington Flash - 20.8.2018

It's been raining over night with drizzle still in the air this morning, and to add to the rain the light isn't so good. I intended to visit Pennington Flash today as there have been a number of Kingfishers putting in an appearance but I'm wondering is it worth going, as they say nothing ventured nothing gained and I go for it.

The car park at Pennington is quite full, in the adjoining park area there's a small fair in full swing with Bon Jovi belting out, it's half term what else would you expect !

Normally I would make my way down to the Ramsdale Hide as you can get quite close to the birds that use a number perches placed in the water using the "big white" but first I take a small detour to the Horrocks hide to see whats about. As I enter cameras are clicking away and someone points to a Kingfisher sat on a post no more than five meters away, quickly I get the camera out to join the action.

The light intensity is pretty good with sunny intervals albeit the sun angle from the side isn't highlighting that normally vivid blue and orange plumage colours you normally associate with this iconic bird. The Kingfisher happily dives and catches small fish returning repeatedly to the posts directly in front of me, at times depending whats it's doing it's too close and I have to remove the 1.4x to get some space in the image.

For a period of about forty minuets it's all action with the bird alternating between several posts and a strategically placed branch, then it's all goes quite with the Kingfisher departing for another part of the flash, I've taken over nine hundred images of the Kingfisher....wow !

All I can say is some times you just drop lucky, with a big smiley face I continue on my way to see what other oppertunites are to be found.

Kingfisher - male

The image below shows the eye covered by the translucent nictitating membrane or third eyelid, it has several functions, it lubricates the eye and also offeres some protection to the eye when the Kingfisher is diving or thrashing about trying to stun the fish.

Another image showing the translucent nictitating membrane or third eyelid covering the eye.

I have included this image as it shows how the Kingfisher can control individual eye movement, look at the left eye of the bird and you can see it's looking down whilst the right hand eye is looking forward presumably at the camera action...amazing. The only other species I know that dose this is the Chameleon but I'm sure this isn't unique in the animal world.