WILDLIFE
The fisher king
Electric-blue and elusive, kingfishers are always a thrilling sight on Britain’s rivers, says Matt Gaw. But this live-fast, die-young hunter has little-seen nesting habits that belie its regal beauty
I am getting into the water, clenching my teeth and regulating my breathing, when I hear it coming. A half dog-toy, half cricket chirp; a fluttering peep-peeping. There is a pause and then I see it too. A kingfisher on the wing; a bird that doesn’t so much as fly but unzip the air above the water. An electric-blue arrow that burns bright in the weak sun of a late winter afternoon.
It is a special sight. It always is. While kingfishers are not scarce on Britain’s waterways – there are an estimated 5,100 summer breeding pairs – seeing one still feels like a rare gift.After all, most sightings tend to be so quick, such a sonic boom of half-glimpsed colour, that it can take the brain a while to catch up. It is for this reason that I started swimming this stretch of the Little Ouse river in Suffolk so regularly, to try and become part of this bird’s world for slightly longer.
“While king fishers are not scarce on Britain’s waterways, seeing one still feels like a rare gift”
I lower myself down and launch into a frosty breaststroke. Although storm Eunice has passed and this shallow Suffolk valley is relatively sheltered, I can still feel the wind strong on my face and swirling in the water.Gusts kick the surface of the river into sharp ripples that spit into my face, while a few dropped sticks nudge into me as I look ahead for movement above the water or the distinctive silhouette of a perched kingfisher.
To be honest, it is probably not the best day to come for a swim. But as soon as the winds died, I was itching to get to the river and see how the kingfisher I’ve been watching from the water over the past two or three months had fared; to see if this fragile 40g bird had survived what fences, trees and trampolines had not.
In some ways, given the kingfisher’s multiple connections to the weather, it seemed appropriate, too. The Tudors, with characteristic gruesomeness, believed a dead kingfisher hung by its neck would slowly rotate towards bad weather. Known in Greek legend as the halcyon bird, the kingfisher even gave its name to the peaceful “halcyon days” –a period of time at the start of December when the kingfisher was once thought to lay its eggs on a seaborne raft of sticks and bones.
FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL
In fact, it is around late February to early March when the breeding season kicks off for kingfishers and they begin to pair up. The males, territorial and aggressive at the best of times, can battle in mid-air in bill-locking, frantic and even fatal skirmishes for the right to pass on their DNA.
For the successful male, it is now that the really hard work of nesting begins. The kingfisher does not nest, but instead burrows up to a metre into riverbanks. Occasionally, old burrows will be re-excavated, but often new tunnels will be dug – the male testing for a soft point with his bill, before perching and digging at the bank.The whole process to create a home fit for a king takes about a fortnight, with both birds taking on shifts at the coalface, before backing out the way they came, shuffling spilled earth into the river with their tiny feet.The nest tunnel ends in an oval chamber, which is angled downwards to stop eggs rolling away into the river.
For all the hard work to make the nest, the kingfisher is not exactly house-proud. If you often hear a kingfisher before you glimpse it, you will probably smell a kingfisher burrow before you spot the narrow bankside opening.
Canoeing on the River Wye, I watched a male and a female fly into a burrow that dripped with a stinking green grot of faecal matter, coughed-up pellets and rotting fish. Even the kingfishers seemed to be mildly disgusted with the situation, with each parent washing as soon as they got out.
“The king fisher, it seems, is the rock star of the river, destined to live fast and die young”
ANATOMY OF A KINGFISHER
AVERAGE WEIGHT: 31g (adult) AVERAGE LENGTH: 17cm
If conditions are right, kingfishers can have up to three clutches, often using different burrows to avoid the fetid stink of the previous inhabitants. They lay around six perfect, white, gobstopper-sized eggs, with the first laid in March and April and incubated by both parents. The young stay in the nest for another three weeks before fledging. The adults support them for another three or four days, before aggressively shooing them away and starting the whole process again.
Many of the brood will die in these early weeks. According to Paul Stancliffe at the British Trust for Ornithology, this is largely due to inexperience; the birds haven’t yet had time to grow into their name. But even those that survive are not long-lived. The oldest recorded ringed kingfisher was just four-and-a-half, with most only surviving for 12 months. The kingfisher, it seems, is the rock star of the river, destined to live fast and die young.
Although murderous Tudors and Victorians hunting for iridescent feathers for hats and fishing flies no longer take a toll on kingfishers, the extreme weather and pollution is responsible for the biggest crashes in the kingfisher population. Cold spells can mean the freezing of water, preventing hunting, while rain brings higher waters, reducing visibility and giving fish a chance to shelter in the depths.
The kingfisher that I have been watching does not seem fazed by today’s conditions. In fact, he (the lack of red ‘lipstick’ on the lower mandible suggests male) is making use of a wind-toppled tree, the crown of which now lies in the river’s flow. I stop about six metres away, planting my feet in the river bottom, enjoying the feel of the water against my skin, the needling cold already turning to that strange, almost burning warmth.
CONJUROR OF THE LIGHT
Even from this distance, I can see the neon brightness of him. The sunset gold on his breast. The gas-flame blue of his head that is splashed in lighter blue drops, as if the bird is somehow wearing the river. There is certainly magic in it. While the orange of a kingfisher’s chest and underwing is a product of tiny pigment granules, the cyan and blue are ‘structural’ colours created by the reflection of short-wavelength light striking air pockets within the feathers. For a bird who is barely there when we see it, its colours aren’t there at all.
He is hunting now. I can tell from his posture, the way he bobs his head slightly to gauge depth and focus. I stare at him, thinking how this bird’s whole skull is designed to split water and grab minnows, sticklebacks and bullheads in that needle-nose bill. Any second. Any second.
He waits.
A leaf fizzes past underneath him.
Then he turns his dagger to the flow. Looks with a quick, black eye. And dives.
I’ve seen hundreds of photographs of kingfishers hunting. Some of them locked on to a target, others exploded from the water with prey. One beautiful shot showed the kingfisher at the very moment it was about to enter the water: its reflection charging up to meet it.It looked as though there were two birds rather than one; their slightly opened bills joined in an impossible balancing act.
“He shuffles and turns, strikes the fish twice on the perch then gollops it down whole”
But there is none of that here. No freezeframe, no fuss. The kingfisher is up and down in a blue-blur blink. A hummingbird on caffeine. This time he has struck out. He shakes his head once and then dips again, blipping back into existence with a green slip of a fish held carefully in his bill. He shuffles and turns, looking for an angle, strikes the fish twice on the perch and then gollops it down whole. There is urgency in his eating.A mechanical efficiency.
Dive, thwack, swallow. Dive, thwack, swallow.
This is part of a kingfisher’s daily mission to eat its bodyweight in fish. With hungry chicks, later in the season, the burden becomes greater still. Appetites quickly grow and if a brood of six survives, it’s possible that adult kingfishers will have to source more than 100 fish, plus what they need to stay on the wing, in just one day. No wonder their exhausted parents are so quick to see them on their way.
A FLEETING BEAUTY
Perhaps it’s because I’m getting cold, but I’m finding it hard to keep still. I move too suddenly and the kingfisher notices me. He lifts his tail, excretes pointedly and is gone. I think about following him, but I know he will be much further downstream. Maybe he has another prime hunting spot, or maybe, just maybe, he has a mate and the beginnings of a tunnel in a steep-sided bank.
I get out and dry myself on the bridge that gives good views of the river in both directions.The sun has just set and the last rays create an orange blush against the clear, darkening blue.It is, I think, a kingfisher sky: another beautiful trick of the light.
Matt Gaw is a journalist and author who has written for The Guardian, The Times and The Telegraph. His books include The Pull of the River: A Journey into the Wild and Watery Heart of
WHERE TO SEE KINGFISHERS
Of course, you don’t have to get into the water for a good sighting of a kingfisher.
A vantage point on bridges over rivers, streams and canals can give you a chance to see a kingfisher blazing over the water for slightly longer. Here are some of the best places in the UK to get up close and personal with the fisher king.
• Lackford Lakes, Suffolk (below) suffolkwildlifetrust.org/lackfordlakes
• London Wetland Centre, Barnes wwt.org.uk/wetland-centres/london/
• The Great Fen, Cambridgeshire greatfen.org.uk
• RSPB Rye Meads, Hertfordshire rspb.org.uk/reserves-and-events/reserves-a-z/rye-meads/
• RSPB Strumpshaw Fen, Norfolk rspb.org.uk/reserves-and-events/reserves-a-z/strumpshaw-fen/
Watch!
Helen Skelton photographs kingfishers in a Welsh nature reserve in this Countryfile episode bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09wwd8f