A Kingfisher at Upton Warren Nature reserve

Compared to last years stellar birding, this year has seemed very slow at times. I guess it’s inevitable after last year’s September fall of the decade of American warblers that this year would seem dull in comparison.

There’s been nothing in the past couple of weeks to temp me to do a “drop all and drive” so I’ve been concentrating on getting a few jobs done at home prior to my annual Shetland trip at the start of October.

I did, however, recently spend a very enjoyable and relaxed morning at Upton Warren. My plan was to do an hour or so at the moors before moving onto the flashes. A short while after I set myself up in the hide overlooking the moors a Kingfisher flew in and perched on one of the newly installed sticks in front of the hide. It spent maybe 5 minutes jumping between the three sticks. It caught several small fish providing some lovely photographic opportunities. I hence decided to stick around to see if he came back.

The male and female are similar in appearance but can be distinguished by the colour of the lower mandible which is black in the male and orange in the female leading to the old expression that the female wears lipstick.

As the morning wore on the scrapes and water in front of the hide got busier and busier with wildfowl flying in which seemed to deter the Kingfisher from more fishing. It came in several times, perching only briefly on one of the sticks before flying off.

Towards the end of the morning an attractive Marsh Harrier drifted over, presumably the one that has been seen regularly at Upton over the last month or so. Waders were somewhat scarce on the ground with only a pair of very skittish Dunlin and singles of Snipe and Green Sandpiper.

Come 12:30 I departed for home to continue on my list of jobs quite refreshed from a very chilled out mornings birdwatching.

Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!

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