We got up at dawn on the Wednesday, to visit a site down near Cley where barn owls hunt. We arrived at the site at about 5am, just as the sun was rising…. beautiful! It wasn’t until about 6am that we saw the barn owl, but unfortunately, it was hunting in the field behind the car and did not choose to come into view, so I could photograph it, sadly. Lovely to see though, but he was not around for along before disappearing as quickly as he had appeared.
We drove down to Salthouse and walked along the coast there. This area is crossed by ditches, and it was on a small wooden bridge that we came across a kingfisher. We had spotted it as a dot in the distance and walked down to the spot and sat up against a fence, hoping it would re-appear. We were about 20m or so away and did not have to wait long before it appeared!
A dazzling blur of blue and orange and it alighted right in front of us! I have only ever seen a glimse of a kingfisher, so this was a real treat. It sat, bobbing, on the bridge and on several occasions, dived down into the ditch with a suprising loud’ plop’ before re-appearing with a fish, which it beat on the rail. We were captivated and watched this kingfisher for some 40 minutes beofre it disappeared up the ditch. It was about 8.30am now and people were starting to appear and walk along the paths.
We had shared a very special wildlife encounter…. one which I will never forget. The photos below are uncropped, giving you an idea of the distance we were away. These were taken on my 500mm lens at full stretch.
Then, here is a selection of cropped images……
and finally….. I did take a little bit of video… nothing on Charlie Hamilton-James, but I my first decent sighting of one of these amazing birds… something I will certainly not forget!
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