A Kingfisher

My busy Sunday has included work, play and blipping.

I went to a public meeting about the proposed new waste incinerator for Gloucestershire, close to the site earmarked for it. I am not a fan of this proposal on environmental grounds, nor I believe is our council. It will be a long road of more meetings, public consultation, planning permissions and hard work.

On the way home from Gloucester, I wandered in the car towards the River Severn, but got sidetracked short of my destination by the views along the Sharpness Canal which I crossed on a swing-bridge. I parked and walked south along the towpath, beside a canal which actually seems like a wide river at this point. It is a canal that allows sea-going vessels to reach the inland port of Gloucester from the Severn estuary, and links via the Severn itself to the whole inland waterway system of Britain.

The towpath was high above the water's edge and at one point I dropped down the bank about 12 feet to a point where fisherman obviously choose to ply their hobby. I hadn't taken any pictures, and was forced into action when suddenly on the far bank of the canal, my peripheral vision noticed a bird landing on a branch right opposite to me. I raised my camera with my zoom lens luckily attached and on trying to focus realised this was a Kingfisher. I shot a picture immediately in case it flew away, which it then did. I tried to follow it's flight and snapped a couple more but knew that was it. This branch is a classic place for a Kingfisher to perch in order to observe and possibly dive into the water in it's hunt for fish.

I took many more (and much sharper) pictures of flowers, birds (including a woody woodpecker from my study) and bees and lillies floating happily on the canal's edge. But I knew this picture would be my blip, as it is so rare for me to see a Kingfisher, let alone capture it for a blip.

A woman walking her two dogs on the towpath stopped to retrieve them as they had decided to come and say hello to me, jumping up in friendly greeting. She asked if I had seen the Kingfisher and after my reply we chatted for a few minutes. She said she grew up in a council house in South Wales, with an agoraphobic mother, so that she never went out in any countryside until she went to university. There she saw a pig for the first time and was shocked by it, not knowing what it was. The only Kingfisher she had seen before coming here, had been on a jigsaw puzzle, and so she thought it was an enormous bird. I reassured her that the one we had seen was in fact full grown. I feel very lucky to have seen it too.