kingfisher!

 

The 28th of January was a very welcome relief from the near constant drizzle and low grey clouds. I had forgotten to look at the forecasts, as there seemed no point. Then I woke up to sunshine and blue skies on the 28th. I was surprised that I hadn't known it was on the way and had nothing planned. However I put my camera into the backpack and got out the door around 11am. I was thinking Warriston but I'd check Powderhall for kingfishers first.

It was a delight to be out in decent weather. Of course I prefer it to the rain or cold wind, but more than that, photography becomes nearly impossible when there is no proper light about. On a sunny day you can take a photo of the last leaves on a twig before they drop, (above) and the colours sing in the sunshine. That photo on a grey day would just not come up to snuff. And most of the wildlife that disappears in crappy weather, was out in the sunshine taking advantage of the day. Out killing things or eating buds or just sunbathing before the weather window closes sharply for another fortnight.

bullfinch (m)

There was no sign of the kf at Powderhall. The WoL was fast flowing and murky with all the recent rainfall. However that made me think that the WoL kingfishers might temporarily relocate to the clearer waters at the Botanics. I had been considering the Botanics - to check if the rhodies had flowered. They are often a good option for the first butterflies of the year although it was still a little early as yet. Okay, Botanics it was; if there was nothing there, then I'd head round to Warriston.

Some bullfinches North of the Willow Pond caught my attention and I spent too long walking under the trees from which they were removing new buds. There seemed to be lots of birds and squirrels about, out making a living. The squirrels seemed particularly numerous. As did the robins.

robin

blackbird (m)

LTT

this squirrel appeared to be sunbathing 25ft up a tree
motionless and holding on like a bat with its hind feet

this one was very pleased to pose in return for hazelnuts

I went up to the Rhododendron Copse: remembering that they are among the earliest flowering plants of the year and being well shaded from wind, they tend to attract insects. Just near the bingo bee pulmonaria I saw an unusual looking bird fly round and land in the tree on the corner. It was a kingfisher and its shimmering blue-green feathers reflected the sunlight like polished metal. It felt really out of place to see one away from water. Mesmerised, I raised my camera but it flew off before I could even get it in the frame. I had a mooch about to see if it had stayed in the area but saw no more of the  turquoise and orange plumage. A complete joy, if somewhat short-lived. I made a mental note to check out the ponds after I was done at this bit.

The rhododendrons at Rhododendron Copse were in bud but the buds hadn't opened yet. A marmalade hoverfly had turned up for the same reason and seemed miffed there were no flowers and no pollen. First hover of the year. My excitement was only just contained! Although I did take far more photos than anyone needed. And then a hundred yards later, towards the cafe I found another and took its photo too many times as well. I think mostly out of relief that we had passed the worst of the Winter, the shortest days behind us. (Perhaps, although Feb and March can also be shite!) And that insects were now on the photo-menu again. There was also a fly and a wasp. 

hoverfly with bud refusing to open

Phaonia spec.

common wasp
Vespula vulgaris

marmalade hover #2

robin - one of many

elsewhere the rhodies were in full bloom
and yet there were no insects (that I could see) around the flowers

blackbird (m)

a sparrowhawk was circling overhead

Just after the hoverfly excitement I bumped into Bob and Maggie also out and about, enjoying the much improved weather. We chatted for a bit then headed in different directions only to meet up again 15 minutes later at the Chinese Hillside pond where I was coaxing a robin to take bread from my hand. This might have been the highlight of the day had there not been a kingfisher sat two thirds of the way down the pond. Hugh was keeping an eye on it from the bench under the pagoda. He gave Maggie his binoculars to see more closely. It was a female (red on lower bill) and she was likely the one that was chased away from the Willow Pond by the resident female there. Hugh said the one that flew off headed up the hill towards the Rhododendron Copse and was almost certainly the one I saw landing in the tree.

Although the kingfisher wasn't within easy reach of the camera initially, it would dive for a fish and then take up another perch. If it caught a fish it would sit on a heavier branch on the right and knock the daylights out of the unfortunate minnow on said branch. It adopted a number of perches and if there weren't too many people at the pagoda making a racket then it would occasionally come quite close. 

Having felt short-changed by the WoL kingfisher up at the Dean Gallery bridge so many visits recently, I relished the opportunity to get better footage and stills here. I stayed almost exactly 2hrs watching it and taking loads of video in real time and slo-mo. And only left when loads of unruly kids and tourists eventually swamped the place making it thoroughly unpleasant. However it encouraged me to leave before the light completely went and there was still a point to wandering round the rest of the garden.

Bob and Maggie left and Ken turned up. It was good to chat to Ken and Hugh and the time I was there flew by. It felt more like 45mins to an hour sat there - only by checking the gps tracker did I realise it was 2hrs. Ken went for a wander to find more hovers and honeybees but Hugh remained there the whole time I was there. While texting Mary from there, she reminded me I'd missed the opportunity to use a favourite Botanics dad joke to say,
Ken Hugh I saw at the Botanics? 😆

This was by far the best angle to shoot the kingfisher - when it sat over to the left with the red of the bridge behind it making the colours pop in sunlight. It only happened twice while I was there and I hastily shot off some 120fps in HD slow-mo. It is large enough a format to be able to extract these frames as stand-alone photos. In video editing software I can go through the movie clip frame by frame, to choose the most successful images. At the time I was so busy keeping the bird in the frame, and in focus, that I hadn't noticed how glorious the background colours made the picture. A very nice surprise to come home and view it on the computer monitor.

Naturally I tried to catch the kf diving into the water and then emerging with a fish. The sort of shot I have seen many times on tv. Sadly I was just not quick enough and none of the attempts were close enough to put that shoogly out-of-focus footage in the final video at the bottom of the page. The problem is the bird does nothing for 15minutes then without warning plops into the water and then back out, flying to its perch in a second or 2.

Its also really quite a small bird operating at a ridiculously fast speed, quite a distance away. Even at 4.8 times slower than real life it still moves pretty fast. And at that distance I have to have the zoom at 250~400mm (500~800 full frame equivalent) which means trying to find the action through the end of a telescope, the tiniest movement making it shoogle about like buggery. Had it been diving at the same spot repeatedly, you could set up a tripod, zoom in and focus on the spot, but it continually changed areas, sometimes at the far back end of the pond, sometimes in the middle left and sometimes middle right, with 2 visits in front of the bridge. It's a work in progress but 2hrs well spent and the footage I did get was a lifetime best. So for once I'm pretty happy. What a difference a day of decent weather makes. Go back today and you'd get a drab grey bird, with poor focus and movement blur. 

Catch of the day was a pretty large fish. The bird whapped it over the branch repeatedly for a couple of minutes, long after it would have died of asphyxia alone. I did wonder was it trying to break it into smaller pieces as it would surely fill all the available room inside the kingfisher. However it eventually went down whole. I knew we'd have a wait while it began to digest the meal before hungry again.

However maybe half an hour later it was diving again. It took about 6 fish in the 2 hours I was there. Success rate was about every second dive. I have no idea who stocks the pond with small fish, presumably other birds (ducks, moorhens) bring in eggs on their feet. Hugh and I considered the possibility of transporting minnows from nearby Inverleith pond (where I fished for them as a youngster,) to here. I can already hear the outcry from social media saying you can't go interfering with nature like that and the online outrage by those who live to condemn "invasive species."

not shy!

There were some interesting arguments recently in one of the facebook wildlife groups putting up a defence of grey squirrels and how the reds were just as invasive as the greys, having been re-introduced from Scandinavian stock. I wasn't surprised someone was unhappy about the trapping and slaughter of greys; it doesn't fill me with joy. And I haven't heard of an acceptable alternative. Baiting food with contraceptives to limit grey's expansion into red squirrel areas might be less immediately inhumane, although it does smack of eugenics which never goes down well.

All the while I was sat at the pond a very pushy wee (grey) squirrel (above) was running up my leg and sitting on the seat beside me, panhandling for peanuts. I'd already given it a couple and it was being super-persistent about aquiring more. I suspect the Botanics maybe trap and kill (it is illegal to trap and release them in Scotland) a few from time to time. There are so many and they do not respect the plants. But I have never heard it officially. Given how popular the furry-tailed rats are with the public it wouldn't be good PR to make it public.

back again at the best spot!
but only for a brief second or two

wood pigeon

great tit, after a splash in the pond, dries itself on a branch

brief visit from a siskin

A couple of robins provided good entertainment and something to point the camera at when the kf was inactive down the other end of the pond. This one knew I had bread and seeds, but was being quite cautious. It would come over and sit on the barriers, mooching for handouts. However when I put some bread on the ground the moorhens, ducks or pigeons would barge in ahead of the more cautious robin. 

more minnow bashing and stickleback swiping

there were some nearby branches it occasionally visited 
when there weren't crowds at the pagoda

you shall have a fishy

The robin got a little bolder and posed very nicely for photos. I managed to make sure it got a decent salary for this although at one point I was so distracted, Hugh had to draw my attention back to the kingfisher which had landed really close by. Thanks Hugh!

moorhen

At this point a group visit came by the pagoda. I tried to tune them out but they were so noisy and disruptive I reckoned it would discourage the kingfisher from making any further excursions to our end of the pond. I had got lots of shots and doubted there'd be any better. And the light was fading fast. Time to move. I went via the rock garden where flowering gorse attracts hoverflies and other insects, but they'd all called it a day. Some pine needles were looking great in the dying rays of the sun. Incredibly the sun was still out and nicely lighting a heron in the WoL, at Powderhall. 

are you looking at me?

blue tit and (below) stock dove in St Mark's

moonshine

very pleased with the kf video
best quality kingfisher material to date
soundtrack: Otto by Ed Carlsen

I actually had a ton of footage, much of it a distant kf doing very little in very laborious slo-mo. My initial respose was to not waste any of it, however that would have resulted in a ten+ minute video that nobody would watch after the first minute. (You can check the average viewing stats on youTube and it tells you what percent switched off after 38seconds. 😁  Makes you realise the compact nature of people's attention spans these days. Fair enough.) So going against my inclusive nature I harshly edited this down to the leanest 80seconds. Which also makes it blog-and-facebook-friendly as they don't accept anything over 100mb.

2.86miles in 3hrs35hm (2hrs at pond)
BLISS!
before back to normal January shit weather