Bedazzled !

I was up at the crack of dawn this morning to go down to the river to try and see a kingfisher. At just past 8am the sun was not quite over the horizon and the light was poor along the riverbank. Nevertheless I followed a flash of electric blue as it zipped along just above the water and then up into a tree. Can you spot it?

Time to zoom in and take in the wonderful colours of this small beautiful bird. Here she is fishing for her breakfast. I can see its a she as the bottom of the beak appears to have red lipstick on. A male kingfisher’s beak is all bluey black.

Did you know that the pigment colours of the back of a kingfisher are actually brown? However we perceive bright turquoise blue because of “structural colouration” which means that the way the feathers are angled reflect light so that we see the bright blue colour.

In the next photo a twig has got in the way of my shot, however then the kingfisher bows her head as if to say, “is this any better?”

Well, actually she’s probably caught sight of a tasty minnow.

The light was too dark to capture any shots of the kingfisher flying. As it darted away upstream I lost it. I headed that way too and thought I’d maybe get a chance to photograph it with highter shutter speeds later. However I didn’t see it again and will have to leave that for another day.