Like the proverbial London buses, you wait ages for a bird, then two come along at once. That often happens with kingfishers, which usually pass in a flash of blue and orange, seared on to your retina even after the bird has gone.
So I was pleased when, while taking a group of Museum of Somerset volunteers along the River Tone in the middle of Taunton, we heard – and almost immediately saw – a kingfisher. As usual, the sighting was brief: zipping along like a bullet before disappearing upstream. Typical, I thought, as I turned my attention to a pair of migrant hawker dragonflies, glinting in the autumn sunlight at the river’s edge.
Soon afterwards, though, we had a longer encounter with the kingfisher as it perched by the bank. It then dived into the water, and grabbed a silver fish almost as big as its head, which it promptly dropped as it flew beneath the bridge where we were standing.
That was a great view, but the very next day I got an even better one. I was walking along the sea wall by the River Parrett when some fellow birders pointed out a kingfisher perched a few metres ahead. Surrounded by pied wagtails, it plunged several times into a shallow pool, before finally flying away.
