10.At last!

At last, after 10 years it has happened. Twice in less than a week there has been a kingfisher, not just perched on the paving stones by the edge of the water beneath our bedroom window but actually fishing from them. What it caught was not particularly spectacular, but I have never seen such aggression meted out to such tiny prey.
I was becoming increasingly worried that our stretch of the river had been abandoned by both kingfisher and water vole as, for the first time since we moved here, we had seen neither all summer. This week I have seen a kingfisher every day, and on several occasions it has landed within view. I even saw two flying side by side over the water on one morning, and on what must rate as the most hectic few minutes in my history of river watching I saw a kingfisher perched on the gate, followed immediately by a cormorant wrestling with a large, bloodied fish. I was then amazed to see a squirrel hopping up the river bank as though he had just arrived by boat.
Kingfishers really are special British birds, with vibrant colours and fascinating habits and, although most people would recognize one, I suspect that relatively few people have actually seen one. My nephew Paul is a civil servant working at the heart of government in London but as a child he would sometimes join us on country walks in Lincolnshire. One of our favourite walks was along a disused railway track and around some fishing ponds near Donington-on-Bain and there was something of a family ritual about the way we would react to the sight of a kingfisher. One of us would spot the flash of iridescent turquoise over the water’s surface and a loud whisper would announce the sighting – “kingfisher!” Our twin daughters would then run ahead, desperate to see it again, frequently calling out that they had indeed seen it again.
Paul and his sister would always join in with this ritual when they were with us and I was pleased that we were able to share such a thrilling experience – it would be something to hang on to later in life during those endless meetings discussing pensions with his colleagues. But Paul had a guilty secret. More than twenty five years later, at a family occasion and at the age of 33, Paul owned up. Yes, he had joined his cousins in the kingfisher routine on several occasions, and yes, it had been fun – but no, he had never actually seen a kingfisher. He had always been very short-sighted but none of us had realized just how much this had limited his wildlife watching ability. Paul was the first one to receive a copy of the photograph I took this week from the bedroom window.
An interesting post script to this story concerns the kingfisher’s toilet habits. Shortly before we had been privileged to witness one feeding from what we call our ‘jetty’ we had been intrigued by the mystery of the white ‘chalk’ lines on the paving stones. Who or what could be responsible for those? They were each about 15 to 20 cm long, starting about 10cm from the edge of the river and at right angles to its direction of flow. They were easily washed away by rain, but re-appeared in different pattern and numbers each day.
The mystery was soon solved and all it took was a glimpse of a tail briefly raised. My view was obscured and I missed the small quantity of excrement propelled at great speed from beneath it, but I have seen enough wildlife films to recall this behaviour. Once again I was left wondering why I had been so slow to pick up on such obvious visual clues.