Some of my regular followers will have seen a spate of posts this week regarding my pursuance of Kingfishers. I deliberately did not post any information about my whereabouts but now we are home I can reveal that I was on location in Mylor Churchtown, Cornwall.

In all I spent 19.5 hours driving there and back and some 30 hours rooted in more or less the same spot over 6 days observing and at times recording the comings and goings of Kingfishers in saltwater conditions. This is not my first time here, it is my 4th visit and I suppose at least 120 hours have been spent listening out and trying to capture these incredibly beautiful birds in a non-chocolate box type way. Much as I love to see these birds, I cannot really stand ‘staged’ pictures. By staged , I mean the advice of sticking a twig in the water and waiting for the bird(s) to turn up. These creatures live in the mucky urban wastelands of the River Gipping in Ipswich, in both fresh and saltwater and I had got my ears and eyes tuned in in the weeks before we went down to Cornwall.

In years past, I had better opportunities and better (more benign) conditions. I had also taken a field camera and 30 odd sheets of film for some serious large format work but the fresh 15-30 knot winds we had would have been better suited to using that camera as a spinnaker. Yes the yachts-people were having a ball. The field camera came out of the box but only indoors. Whether it is a legacy of the extensive large format photography that  I took up whilst studying for my recent degree, or age, I shot considerably less digital than on  my previous visits.

Let’s be honest, these images would not win any competitions or embrace the lid of a box of chocolates or some gift card but they do represent contextual imagery of birds working their habitat. I got no closer that 35 yards to any of the birds shown here and at time I was shooting at 12,800 ISO just to get sufficient shutter speeds and aperture to warrant something more that a blue streak on the sensor..

The image at the start of this post shows the environment within which I was working. The wooden shed gave me some respite from the stiff Easterlies. I saw Kingfishers every day. I did not photograph them every day and indeed some people are blissfully unaware of their presence. It was good to see some familiar working faces after a 4 year break and this visit was just what I needed to get over the hectic third year at UCS. I had looked forward to this all year and I cannot wait to go back.

This sequence was made on Sunday having observed this female using a perch in the overhanging bushes on Saturday. This perch was only viable at high water on a Spring tide which is what we were on the tail end of. Neaps featured for the rest of the week so no more use was made of that. The bird arrived after I had stood in the same location (behind the shed in the first picture) for 2 hours. She surveyed the water dived, caught a fish, stunned it, gobbled it and off to the next preferred feeding spot.

On Thursday, this same bird at low water just after dawn chose to use the head rope  of a trawler to rest and observe to abundant small fry. She was obviously headed for the mooring services barge but had clocked me and I had to spin around 180 degrees with some very heavy gear to get these shots from some 35 yards away.The soft white area are stone mooring weights on the edge of the quayside. If I was another inch to port, I would have been in the drink and without any gear.

Not all of my time was spent in the pursuit of these creatures. When tidal conditions were not right, I ‘d take my self off around the Smugglers Path to Flushing.

Mylor Churchtown was an important naval port during the Napoleonic wars and is still very much a working fishing port as well as providing no end of leisure facilities. It seemed that the blustery conditions were suited to laying lobster pots and taking a yacht around Carrick Roads.

There is no end of ‘down time’ when shooting birds that are fickle by nature and my eyes wandered over the to the complex knitting that goes into making and repairing lobster pots. I rather like these.

All in all this was a superb week even though I did not get as close to the birds as I normally do. It was an exercise in ‘zenification’. Just what the doctor ordered. I will be looking for a repeat prescription.