I experienced my first kingfisher when I was fourteen. I was walking by the River Arun in Sussex and stopped by a wooden bridge where a small stream joined the river. A dazzling blue shape, glowing as if lit from inside, whizzed under the bridge and away upstream. I was dumbfounded, so overcome by this alien presence that for a few moments I couldn’t think straight. The sheer surprise of it all seemed beyond words, but eventually I worked out what it was.

I still feel that sense of surprise, though I’ve seen a lot of kingfishers since. On a hot summer’s day in my thirties I was leaning on the parapet of an old stone bridge in the Northamptonshire town of Oundle. I watched young fish gently swimming near the surface of the water below, noticing the stripy flanks of some tiny perch. The clear face of the water shattered as a kingfisher shot under the bridge and took a fish right below me. It settled on a branch opposite with it in its beak. I thought how bright its orange breast  looked against the blue and tourquoise of its other feathers. Then it was gone.

The only time I didn’t feel astonishment is when I was sitting comfortably on a warm day looking across the river. I stared at the trees on the far bank in an unfocussed way. A kingfisher flashed from left to right across the whole of my gaze. I didn’t jump or startle, just took it in as it happened. That was memorable in itself.

In this diary I’ll gather together images and thoughts about kingfishers from my daily walks along the River Nene between Oundle and Cotterstock. If you know a lot about kingfishers, or have at least seen one, I hope it chimes with your own experiences of this uniquely exciting and colourful bird. If you have never seen one then I hope you enjoy it anyway. And who knows, by giving hints about how and where to look – and listen – it may just help you experience one for yourself.

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The old year ended with heavy rain and floods and it’s still not possible to walk to Cotterstock along the river. The town bridge is busy with sightseers looking out across the flooded meadows. People excitedly tell me they’ve spotted a kingfisher along the cut by the bridge – a lovely antidote to lockdown.

It’s true that you are likely to see a kingfisher from the bridge at any time. But when the main river is in flood the stiller water in the cut beside the bridge may be less murky, making it easier for birds to spot fish below the surface. The exception is when it freezes over, but it’s not cold enough for that yet.

There’s a favourite perch in a small tree just past the town boathouse. It’s the first place I look when I set out for a walk. There was a kingfisher there today, a female. You can’t tell the difference between the sexes with the naked eye as both are brilliantly coloured. But with binoculars or a zoom lens you can see that the female has pink running along the bottom of her beak. She was very still and stayed there for several minutes while people walked to and fro behind me.

Often when I’m walking by the river my eye is fooled into thinking I’m seeing a kingfisher in the distance when it’s actually a blue or red fishing lure or scrap of plastic bag hanging in a tree. The exact opposite happened here. I saw the shiny blue back feathers first out of the corner of my eye and just kept on walking….until it moved!

The other thing is that they can look so impossibly tiny, rounded and colourful that they resemble a child’s fluffy toy. I was watching one near town the other day that was so still that for a moment or two I almost wondered if someone had wired a toy in place as a practical joke!

On a more serious note, this was a male, so I’ve seen both a male and female on the same stretch near Cotterstock lock in the last few days, which is great.

After I’d posted pictures on Facebook a friend I’ve never met messaged to say he’d never seen a kingfisher and where were the best places to look? The easiest thing was to invite him to join me on a walk.  Having said that, I warned that nothing in nature is guaranteed but at least if we saw nothing I could point out the best places to look on a future visit.

Kingfishers usually like to perch on a thin bare branch a few feet above the water where they have a good view of the fish. That will often be a dead branch in spring and summer, but in winter there are many more to choose from. If you haven’t seen a kingfisher actually landing after a flight then the trick is to slowly look along the trees or shrubs at the water’s edge. If you are lucky a tiny patch of shiny blue or the orange breast will jump out at you. You need patience and sharp eyes. Kingfishers also make a little whistling “pip” sound which can alert you if you know it well enough.

We got almost to the side weir without seeing one, but met other people who already had. Just then I heard that dog-whistle call and saw a  profile shoot by low to the water. A swift walk across the weir and there it was, perched against a patch of ivy on the far bank.

After seeing zoomed in images of kingfishers it would be natural to expect to see the bird in as much detail, but they are so tiny that the naked eye is only aware of small patches of colour that contrast with the background – the orange breast feathers and the blue of the rest of the bird, which in strong sunlight may be almost tourquoise (if the light is dim the colours may not show up at all). Luckily someone passed him a pair of binoculars while I was concentrating on getting pictures.

It was a wonderful being able to find one for him – a kingfisher shared is doubly enjoyable.

A compilation of video clips made by the river in 2020 with music I wrote specially for it.

A pair of kingfishers came whizzing towards me on the path between Oundle and Cotterstock this morning. One veered past to the left and the other – a female – turned tail at the last minute and flew to a perch about 50 feet away. Just time for one quick photo and she was gone again.

It was great to get a picture in last night’s snow and see two birds together. I remember reading that kingfishers pair up in late autumn and separate to different territories for the winter. Then they reunite in spring. But that’s not what I’ve noticed this winter. Several times I’ve seen them together or heard lots of calls from a single bird which often means that another is close by.

There’s been a bitter east wind  this week. The first part of the river walk is very exposed and chilly – even wearing two woolly hats and multiple scarves didn’t make much difference. One advantage is that the mud froze and made walking easier, and the river level went back to normal very quickly after a long period of flooding. Birds seem to conserve their energy in this weather and there is little song, though I did hear  a very fine early blackbird trilling away at dusk on a TV aerial in New Road.

Wind sounds were impressive though. The first willow past the boathouses always surprises me with the strength and full tone of the sound of wind in its branches. On the far side below Snipe Meadow the skeletal trees creaked and shuddered with each bone-chilling gust. Close to the bank the wavelets lapped against driftwood trapped by overhanging branches.

I watched a swan taking off into an oncoming wind, rising painfully slowly above the reeds before banking away downwind as soon as it could. There were a couple of flocks of lapwings, redwings, fieldfares and the usual groups of pied wagtails. There was a grey wagtail foraging in the frozen weir, disappearing among some large stones where icicles hung from thin branches. Two little egrets flew off lazily as I got near to the lock, and a male mandarin duck took off from the water near Snipe Meadow. Most years there is breeding pair on that stretch, though they were unlucky last year.

After seeing a kingfisher in the same tree for several days in a row there were a couple of days with no sightings. As the water gets less muddy there must be more places to fish, and the stream coming in from Glapthorn is very clear. I sat on a fallen tree trunk yesterday and saw one shoot by downwind and downstream. It happened again today and as it appeared to land a bit further down the bank I walked back to look for it. I had no luck and came back again to just in time to see a bird taking off from the very same tree trunk I’d been sitting on!

The wind has now veered round to the south and much warmer weather is forecast. There should much more birdsong, pairing and early nesting behaviour.

A sight to gladden the heart by Oundle’s north bridge this morning.

I was recording the sounds of birdsong by the river this morning and a woodpecker started tapping out gentle rhythmic patterns from a branch just overhead, like someone knocking a door. This isn’t the full drumming sound – though there was some of that from another woodpecker further off – but the slower, quieter probing they do to find grubs and insects. It’s not normally as tuneful and musical as this and usually sounds much quieter as it’s higher up the tree. There are some mallard duck skirmishes going on too. Put the sound up and have a listen!

A few years ago at around this time I watched two green woodpeckers doing a sort of dance on the riverbank. They flew up into a tree and started to do it again, and I was able to get a short video of them. It’s impossible to tell if they are a mating couple, but I doubt two males could get this close without pecking at each other!

I realised a long time ago that a hole appears around you as you walk in nature – if you stop and sit for twenty minutes and move nothing but your eyes it will fill in again and you’ll see and hear all sorts of things. I’d thought that was because birds and animals were naturally wary of a moving human and only gradually went back to what they were doing before. But I realised today that it’s me who changes too. If I sit still and observe for twenty minutes the breathing slows, the body disappears. Things come and go without undue physical or mental reactions. It’s a form of meditation that opens you out to the world.

There was a misty hush in the meadows near Cotterstock Lock this morning – I loved the gentle sound of the water flowing past this old pollarded willow. (make sure to turn the sound up)

In the woods by the river this morning I thought I could hear a distant stream tinkling. Strange, as there’s no stream on that stretch, and even in the wettest winter they don’t tinkle. Coming closer, it’s a big flock of fieldfares yakking away in the treetops. The resident tits were hopping from branch to branch, a chaffinch puffed out his pink chest, wrens rattled out their expletives and a woodpecker was taking out his fury on the nearest tree trunk. Then the flock took off, a dozen at a time, and gradually things got back to normal.

The light has been difficult for taking photos of distant small birds for a few days now, and although I see a kingfisher almost every day they’ve been whizzing by at high speed rather than perching.

It was a bit brighter this afternoon so I grabbed the camera and headed for the river. Glad I did, because there were a pair of kingfishers on the far bank by the weir. This one, the male, was soon joined by a female and they both set off in close formation along the cut which goes round the back of Cotterstock Lock.

There was lots of calling as they disappeared into the distance. Often there will be a single call every thirty yards or so in flight which stops when they land, so counting calls gives you a rough idea how far they have gone and whether it’s worth setting off in pursuit. In this case it sounded to be a long way so I carried on walking for pleasure rather than pursuit. They unexpectedly passed me again on the way back though – such a joy to see and hear!

Another windy day, and there was a kingfisher perched in a sheltered spot just upstream of the weir. She was right at the edge of a dense mass of ivy which grows over a small tree extending over the water. I watched her for several minutes before she made a short dive into the ivy and stayed hidden. On my way back I heard two kingfishers calling at the same place before they suddenly flew out and disappeared upriver.

It’s possible this will be a nesting site. There is plenty of cover for them, but hardly any bank to dig a nest hole, and I would have thought there was a danger of flooding at any time of year. Mink are known to dig down into nests so it doesn’t seem an ideal spot. The path is close by too, but I watched a nest hole in a river bank at Wolvercote near Oxford as a bird came and went while children and dogs splashed about in the shallows directly beneath.

If there is a nest it won’t be visible, and the only proof will be seeing birds fly into the ivy with fish in their beaks. This stretch is regularly used by parents teaching fledglings to fish but I’ve concluded that the actual nests are elsewhere. It will be interesting to see how things develop over the next couple of months.

I always look for a kingfisher in this small dead tree by the river, so a bright patch of red that shapeshifted into a Greater Spotted Woodpecker was a nice surprise this morning! Really unusual not to be craning my neck when I see one – this was at head height.

Greater Spotted Woodpecker at work by the river between Oundle and Cotterstock this morning. I saw a Red Kite take a fish from the river just after videoing this. I looked it up when I got home because I didn’t quite believe what I was seeing, and they do feed on dead or dying fish. It was certainly a first for me!

Lovely to see a kingfisher this afternoon against the backdrop of Oundle’s beautiful stone bridge. It was perched opposite the town boat club and I was further along the cut towards the river, so the house in the background is right back in King’s Road.

A kingfisher among the twigs and branches this morning. A split second later it took off, circled twice showing the blue of its back then the orange of its belly as it banked, then whizzed of upstream at full speed. It looked like it wouldn’t land again till it got to the bridge a few hundred yards away.

Found a kingfisher’s nest this morning! I’d been looking for places where there is enough bank above the river for a nest hole and spotted one under construction. It was on a bend of the cut which takes waters from the side weirs round the back of Cotterstock Lock. Later, when there are chicks, there will be droppings coming from the hole itself, but for now there are some by a perch on an exposed root just to the right. That was the giveaway. I found a spot about 50 yards away where I can check on its progress – don’t want to disturb the birds by getting too close. I took this short video clip from there and slowed it down to half speed to make it more watchable. The bird comes out of the hole backwards. A completed nest tunnel will have a chamber at the end large enough for the adult birds to turn round on the eggs. Presumably it hasn’t reached that stage yet.

Another windy day, and as I walked to the wooded section I wondered if kingfishers might be sheltering on the far bank. Sure enough, there was one at the very start of the trees, and that was soon joined by the other in the pair. I could just make out their orange fronts in amongst the twigs. They whizzed of upriver and I continued down. I walked close to the nest site but heard and saw nothing.

On my way back I spotted one of the birds on the far bank. It moved up higher into one of the small trees then hid in a thicket. I got the feeling that courtship was still on its mind – fishing didn’t seem to be a priority.

It’s lovely to see the buds and leaves showing more each day. Kingfishers will be much more difficult to spot in a week or two.

A beautiful balletic courtship dance by a pair of swans between Oundle and Cotterstock this morning. I couldn’t resist putting some music with it when I got home, so if you want to hear it don’t forget to put the sound up a little.
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I watched the nest for about 90 minutes yesterday morning. There were four noisy flypasts in that time, two with the briefest of stops on the reeds opposite, but nothing coming in or out of the nesthole. So if there is a sitting bird the shift changeovers are longer than 90 minutes. I wondered if my presence might be affecting things, but it seems logical that there would be territorial flybys without a stop, even if the nest is empty. I last saw a pair on the wooded bank about four days ago, so who knows? Incubation seems to be about 30 days, followed by fledging of 25 so plenty of time to watch and wonder!