Photograph: Craigbirdphotos/Alamy
They’re still together, but it won’t last. The sycamore keys have started to twirl to earth and a parting of ways is on the cards. Kingfisher pairs seldom outlast the summer; by early September mating instincts will have given way to the territorial urge, and that’ll mean that this stretch of the river won’t be big enough for the both of them.
It’s warm, a bit muggy, and the air is thick with the musty stink of rosebay willowherb. Mallard drakes in their dowdy moult or “eclipse” plumage lounge in sulky gangs on the gravel spit, exiled dukes stripped of their finery.
Ants launch pell-mell into flight from a riverbank nest. The female kingfisher – close enough for me to see, by the vermilion-red on the lower part of her bill, that she is the female – zigzags the river, from a clump of reed to a low-hanging beech to a thicket of tired rosebay, where I lose sight of her.
Then along comes the male, taking a smart racing line down the middle of the river. Kingfishers, like movie stars, are always smaller than you expect.
With a noise like ripping linen, a flock of nine young goosanders – “redheads” – drops from the sky. They form a loose flotilla on the water. I last saw some of these as ducklings, back in the late spring, jockeying for places on their mother’s back. Now they’re fine looking adolescents, their long bodies as smooth and silver as river fish. One snaps a saw-edged bill at another.
Both goosander and kingfisher have been vilified in the past for their supposed impact on freshwater fish stocks. Not long ago, I’m told, the warden at the reserve here pointed out the kingfisher pair to a new visitor. “Yes, I see,” the visitor said. “Do you shoot them?”
The female in the rosebay gives her call, somewhere between a whistle and a chirrup. She won’t go far once autumn comes, just a little further upriver.
Over my head a jay takes flight from the sycamore. As the bird crosses the river to the meadow and hawthorns beyond it looks heavy winged and exhausted. But jays in flight always look exhausted.
Jonathan Elphick gives this year’s William Condry memorial lecture (thecondrylecture.co.uk) on The Birds of North Wales at Tabernacle/MoMA, Machynlleth, 1 October, 7pm for 7.30. Admission £5 to include refreshments (no need to book)
