Common Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis)

Image

Remember What a Day?? (click HERE ,if you don’t! ). It happened on that day(and on last weekend) .

Birds are very good posers, but unfortunately only for those who sit inside a car and click. For someone like me (who is on foot most of the time), they spot you before you see them and fly off. Having said that, I won’t complain. Its fun this way and I enjoy every bit of it.

Common Kingfisher is one of the many colorful and beautiful birds which every photographer likes to have a shot in his collection.Till this day, though I had seen it many times, I didn’t have even one good shot of this for some reason.

It was a lovely morning, I was walking on the bank of  a small pond which is few km from my house, I noticed the Common Kingfisher perched on a small plant, looking for fish. Before I could do anything else it flew off from there (one more chance missed) and perched on a small distant twig. I decided to walk around the bush and stopped at a safe distance from the twig. I waited there for a while and let off few frames. From there, the bird was too small in my lens. Lying flat on the ground, I crawled slowly towards the bird. Slowly the bird started looking big (definitely not full frame)  in my lens. It’s not that bird didn’t notice me, but it was probably preoccupied looking for fish.

I stopped at a comfortable distance and spent a lot time in front of it. It was worth every minute, I saw it look for the fish patiently, dive into water (they are avid divers), scaring the other Kingfisher which came towards it, catch and miss fishes, shaking the water off its body. This process kept on repeating. So amazing was the experience that though I missed many shots, I managed to take some decent ones in the end.

Let me introduce you to the bird itself,

Common Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) is one of the most colorful and instantly recognizable birds. The upper parts are blue while the underparts are orange in color.The bill is very – long and dagger like. The Kingfisher feeds mainly on fish and invertebrates, which it catches by perching on a convenient branch. They usually sit on low-hanging branches or bushes right above the water or on small plants that spring up in the middle of shallow waters and dive into the water when prey comes within striking distance.

Common Kingfisher

One strong Kingfisher:)

Well, its not about to fly or its not calling!! If you look at it carefully, there is one more Kingfisher flying towards it. This screamed and scared the other ‘fisher. This is not that good a pic, but I have put it here to show this behavior!!(how I wish the water didn’t reflect the white sky!).

Concentration

This is how they look for fish.

Blast

As I mentioned earlier, Kingfishers are avid divers. After a dip into the lake and catching its prey, this is how they shiver the excess water off its body and batter the fish. This is my FAVORITE pic. For me, this represents the bird.

Click HERE to see color version of this.

With Fish

Its colorful attire

On the way back home, though I wished I had an extra 100mm (which I can only wish for now 😦 ), I had a rare smile on my face. It is not often that things happen the way the you want and when they do happen, you should completely enjoy it!

Nikon D300s,Nikkor  70 – 300 mm lens, lying  flat on ground.

Have a great Sunday.