Kingfisher footage

Do you remember I mentioned that a kingfisher had been spotted on the river last week? It turns out it’s a nesting pair and the Farm Manager here, who is like our very own David Attenborough, caught some footage of them. He has a camera with a motion detector so he can leave it in a top secret location as long as necessary to capture the birds. I can’t work out how to turn any of the clips into a format that WordPress will accept but here’s a still. It was incredible to see them diving into the water from off screen. Literally, if you blinked you missed it, they were so fast!

There’s a very funny clip where one of the kingfishers catches a fish that’s nearly the same size as himself. He’s whacking it hard on the branch to try and knock it out. At one point he hits it so hard he loses his grip and it falls into the water. The expression on his face his hilarious. He looks all around him, even up to the sky. Now where on earth did that fish go?

As the camera is triggered by motion it showed up a fair few other visitors to the top secret river location. A curious magpie has a good look at the camera, giving it a few enquiring pecks. A bit later two pairs of legs wade up the river, then back down again. One pair of legs were very hairy. The other pair of legs were particularly small and were followed by a little golden boat that looked suspiciously like a washing up liquid bottle being pulled on a string? Hmmm, I wonder who they might be belong to?!

NB. Before I get any rude comments…the hairy legs weren’t mine!