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.
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