Yesterday I took it easy.

I did not go out photographing as is my want most days. Instead I got stuck into setting the fire, peeling the spuds, roasting the beef, pulling the cork, devouring the beef and roasted vegetables and quaffing an extremely good Cos ’98. Top all that much later on with a lump of Mrs O’s prized Dundee cake – there is none better on the planet I can assure you, and I was all set up for an early morning walk with my camera.

I was gobsmacked to see shadowy figures darting around the high street laden with massive sales bags. I paid no heed. The topic would have been interesting for a project but I was on a mission. Weeks ago at the bottom of a spring tide I had noticed a discarded cash register in the Gipping.

Today, the tide was more or less at the same state as when I last saw this register so needs must. I had Christmas day dinner and Dundee cake to walk off so no better excuse than photographing a submerged (for most of the time) cash register. The pre-dawn light looked promising and yet again I had left the D3S behind as I wanted to test the D810 further and no Sherpas were on hand to help carry the extra equipment. I checked the state of the tide on the seaward side of Stoke Bridge – a point at which the Saxons used to ford the river, and judged that the register would be exposed so crossed over and walked upstream. No sooner had I done that and I heard the familiar call sign of Alcedo Atthis. To my delight the bird was there no less than a cable in front of me and off it went then steered sharply to starboard and disappeared into the old goods marshalling yard. My day was perfect already.

I went on to photograph the register and decided to walk back downstream in the hope of seeing Alcedo Atthis again. I was already lucky enough but I cannot see enough of these birds. They enthrall me.

Anyway, it was rather cold so I busied myself trying different shutter/ISO/aperture settings to test my hand held skills and whilst I was down at 1/20th F7.1  at 200mm I heard the call sign and did what I would normally do as the camera was in my hand, took aim at the blue streak and fired. The bird did bolt past out of my vision downstream so I surmised it had landed on a perch in the river. Again, even though I could not see the bird with my naked eye I fired off two shots without having changed any settings. This sighting was all over in 3 seconds.

So despite this being a poor photograph, here is the Boxing Day Kingfisher.

The bird is perched on a traffic cone, now home a colony of mussels, over 100 yards away. The number of cones in the river astounds me and I had hoped for several months now to capture a Kingfisher using on as a perch. I must try harder next time and be prepared.

This was what I saw just seconds before losing sight of the bird prior to the above image. This is what most people see of these birds. A streak of blue.