Steaming

Another Cathedrals Express steams through.

 
Coming out of Twerton Tunnel, built in 1840 by I.K. Brunel.

Project KFC - Status: Fail !!

Had a good few hours to spend at the river over the last 10 days before a serious dose of flu hit me.  Unfortunately I had a serious dose of bad luck too - or maybe just harsh lessons in being ready for anything at all times.  Friday I had half an hour spare, so started a brief recon of a stretch of river, just to see if they were around.  Sods law, I got there, sat down and while fitting my zoom lens (it's too big to fit in my Crumpler bag attached) two Kingfishers flew upstream screeching, looped right in front of me and one perched about 5 meters away.   By the time I got the lens on, power on, up and focused (ie. about 2 seconds) it was off..

Saturday I got quite a few hours to spend there, so my first proper effort at getting a proper shot.  It was overcast early, so didn't get out until 10.  Spent a couple of hours in a quiet spot with no result, the Sun had moved around so decided to move, crossed a road bridge to another area and just as I was scrambling down the embankment, camera safely in bag, a Kingfisher caught a fish right in front of me and perched beautifully about 5 meters away, again.  Snap, that was a great shot .. or would have been!  No chance this time, we spent 2 seconds inspecting each other before he exited stage left.  

However, this spot seemed good, nice shallow pool full of fish in the shade of the road bridge, so with a nice new perch pushed into the river bed, I walked back up the bank to my waiting spot.. only to look back and the Kingfisher is on the perch already?!  So much for having to wait patiently for hours!  

By the time I got camera up I snapped 2 rapid shots.  Out of focus (I had my teleconverter on at this point, so was manually focussing with a big dose of adrenaline pumping) and with bright sunlight against dark shadow using default metering -0.6ev (just what I had the camera on at the time), they had horribly burnt out hightlights too.  Argh!

It's always amazing to see them, but is it too much to ask for a little co-operation!  :o)

Spent a few more hours at this perch and another slightly further up, but nothing else for the rest of the day and nothing at all the following day too..

Kingfishers 4, Mark 0.  Bring on the next time you tricky little blue buggers!

Note that at no point did I feel like I was disrupting the birds un-duly, this stretch is part of a town center nature reserve and reasonably busy with people.  Several times I've watched people obliviously disturb the Kingfishers and they just fly across the river to another fishing spot without any sign of distress.  From other accounts and forums I have read, they seem a fairly chilled out and tolerant pair.