What A Cracking Day!

Went for a walk this morning along the River Arrow from Alcester towards Kings Coughton, it was a cracking morning, unbelievably warm for a November day. About a mile into the walk I spotted a flash of blue as a kingfisher flew from a branch. Thinking I might be lucky I set the camera up on a tripod and pre-focussed on the branch, I hid in the trees and hoped it would return. About half an hour later the Kingfisher did indeed return, I pressed the shutter release and absolutely nothing happened, the batteries had depleted, AAAgh!!!. I changed the batteries convinced I had blown my chance, but decided to wait a bit longer. I dont know how long I was waiting for when a Goldcrest appeared, feeding on the Lichen covered trees where I was hiding.I watched it for quite a while it seemed oblivious of me being there even though it was only inches away. Sometimes as it moved from branch to branch it almost hovered like a humming bird, of course my camera was down the bank on a tripod, with me thinking this is good I am not going to get a picture of anything. Then all of a sudden a flash of blue and the Kingfisher had returned and this time everything functioned as it should and I managed to get three or four shots,making my day!.

Kingfisher flight

Well this should be interesting, I will be intrigued to hear peoples views on this pic, but first off all I will explain how it came about. I have had a few days off so I managed to get out with the camera a bit, nothing much was happening on the reserve, but while on the way back home I heard the high pitched peep of a Kingfisher as it shot past me downstream. So I waited there hoping it would come back the other way, sure enough after a little while it flashed past again. This was the resulting shot, as I just could not pan fast enough to keep up with it. At first I just disregarded this shot as rubbish, but after looking at it again on the computer and boosting the contrast a little I began to think again,as this was actually just as I saw it, a vibrant flash of blue. So I thought I would post it and see if people liked it or loathed it.

Looking back

I was looking back at some of the pics I took last winter, I thought they might be of interest. The Kingfisher seems to move off the river onto the nature reserve pond in the winter, presumably

there is more food available. They also do this in the summer when the river is in flood.

There is always quite a few Long Tail Tits around in the winter as well. I don't know what others think, but this pic seems to almost have a Japanese print feel to it.