I’m going to need patience, a bit of luck and, obviously, water and fish if I’m going to see a kingfisher today, says Charlie Oliver of the Essex Wildlife Trust. Patience I’ve never had much of, nor luck actually. As for water and fish, I thought Charlie – or at least Essex – were going to provide them. Already I’m not feeling hopeful.
I have seen kingfishers before, probably four or five times in my life. I’ve never set out to spot one, though, they’ve just blue-flashed past over the water. It’s always been incredibly exciting, because they’re so unexpected, they look so exotic and out of place, like something that belongs in the jungles of Costa bloody Rica, not flying along the Regent’s canal in London. But it has only been every 10 years or so – really, what are the chances of seeing one here in a single afternoon? Well again, hopefully this is where Charlie plays his part. It helps to be with someone who knows where to look.
Fingringhoe Wick, near Colchester, is Essex Wildlife Trust’s first nature reserve. An unfortunate name for a place maybe – Fingringhoe – but on a glorious autumn afternoon, looking over the Coln estuary, it is heavenly. And it’s the right place to come looking for kingfishers at this time of year, says Charlie. In the summer, in the breeding season, you’re more likely to see them inland, on rivers, ponds, still or slow-moving water, near to where they nest. Moving in to autumn and winter, they often come towards the coast because here the water doesn’t freeze and there’s a plentiful supply of food. Kingfishers are very vulnerable in a harsh winter.
October especially is a good time somewhere like this, as it’s when young birds might show up, having been turfed out of their parents’ territory, and they’re finding their bearings, establishing their rhythms, looking for the best branches and posts to fish from. And high tide is good, when little fish get pushed to under overhanging branches, sometimes trapped in ditches when the water starts to ebb again. It’s just past high tide now, my hopes are up again …
To be dashed immediately. We arrive at the visitor centre to devastating news. Last week, a kingfisher flew into the large plate glass window there; they found it on the ground, dead. Noooooo. There are only around 4,000 pairs in the entire country, less than one tenth of the human population of Romford, how many can there be here? Surely I’ve missed Fingringhoe’s one kingfisher, by a week, because of tragedy.
We trudge forlornly off anyway, towards the shore, past a pond with a few ducks. Ducks schmucks. And egrets, I’ve had a few ... actually loads here. But these birds are brown and black and white, they look as if they belong (even if egrets don’t really, they’ve arrived recently, boo #TakeBackControl #EgretsOut). I didn’t come here for brown and black and white, I came for shocking electric blue, and orange. Here’s a clouded yellow, but that’s a butterfly. A kingfisher flies by ...
What?! Yes. A kingfisher, low and fast, along the line of the shore, just as we get there, before we even reach the hide we’re heading for. So it’s not the greatest ever sighting, into the sunlight so I’m not getting the full acid-trip blue flash, but still, unmistakable. And the next one is better … Yes, there’s another, closer, and away from the light, so I’m getting blue, orange throat, the works. He winks at me as he flies past … maybe. And then a third, from inside a hide, in less than two hours. Loads of luck, not much patience required. Charlie reckons we’ve seen at least two different ones, if not three. I’ve no idea how he knows, they all look the same to me. Yeah, I’m bored of kingfishers now, they’re like pigeons around here, what else has Fingringhoe got to offer?
Well, rather a lot, as it happens: the aforementioned egrets and ducks (tufted, teal, gadwall, shovelers); chaffinches and meadow pipits; redshanks, greenshanks, godwits (black-tailed and bar-tailed), grey plovers and lapwings, greylag geese, herons, knots and dunlins, grebes (great crested and little), a whole colony of avocets. Then a peregrine! Probably after a duck for tea.
In fact pretty much the only thing we don’t see – or hear – are the nightingales for which Fingringhoe is famous. But that’s because they’ve gone back to Africa – for migratory purposes, rather than anything to do with Brexit. Or – for the same reason – the endangered turtle doves. Or a partridge in a pear tree.
