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Thursday 8 January 2015

Kingfisher a rare garden visit

On Wednesday night through to this morning we received a lot of heavy rain leaving our garden and surrounding countryside covered in flashes of water - the field behind the garden with perhaps a quarter of its acreage under inches of water.

Making birdwatching even harder was the heavy and dark looking sky which hung over for most of the morning. Still, there were plenty of finches and thrushes around the dryer parts of the lawn and also a bird sitting on the garden fence with, it seemed, not a care in the world for the pouring rain. Expecting to see another Redwing through my binoculars, it was quite a surprise to find it was a Kingfisher!
I decided not to disturb the bird with any photography as it occasionally plummeted into the pond for food (newts/insects?). The bird stayed for at least half an hour and I managed just a distant image through the window. Just the second Kingfisher I've seen in the garden and perhaps with two good breeding seasons and frost free winters behind them, Kingfisher populations are expanding again.
 At the same time as the Kingfisher visit, the Little Egrets were present just behind the garden too, so quite a sight for inland Kent and some miles away from a significant water site.

From the kitchen window in the pouring rain, a record shot of our second garden Kingfisher in 20 years

2 comments:

Clare Gillatt said...

Congratulations superb record!

Ploddingbirder said...

A nice surprise Nick!