I've been spending a lot of time on the river watching the kingfisher family, but that doesn't mean I haven't been watching the other wildlife that's about. The local dippers seem to have a great year in terms of successful breeding (blog post to follow) and there are usually two about close to where I sit, and this evening I was treated to one of them catching a fish. I spotted it as it flew directly toward me before veering off and landing on a large rock to my right with t

Conventional wisdom tells us that once the juvenile kingfishers fledge from the nest there is a 3-4 day window where the parents will teach the young how to fish, where to fish and will keep them stocked up on tiddlers while they learn the ropes. Then when those learning days are over the parents will aggressively move the juveniles along chasing them off the territory. Here’s a quote from the RSPB website “Once out of the nest, the young are fed for only four days before the

As mentioned in a previous blog I'm always looking for potential perches where I think a kingfisher "should" sit. In practice it rarely seems to work so I have recently put out some perches to see what would happen. I know kingfishers are curious and have heard they will quite quickly investigate new perches. I guess with the ever changing geography of rivers and riverbanks, perches get washed away and new ones arrive so they need to investigate. The first one I put out was s