It's been three months since I last photographed the kingfishers near Stamford. Since then, they have raised a second brood that has already fledged. I'd hoped to see the juveniles, but alas they did not show. It's possible that the parents were in the process of driving the juveniles away from the territory, but who knows? The only certain thing is that the adults were fishing for themselves; consequently, there were fewer visits than my previous time at the hide.
To compound matters, I was present on the only day of the week when it was heavily overcast, so the light conditions were pretty poor, which was a real shame. That said, I'm very much of the opinion that you take the opportunities presented to you by wildlife and shoot to achieve sharp images and not worry about noise. The combination of improved high ISO performance of modern mirrorless cameras and AI noise reduction, means you're always in with a shout of getting decent images, albeit they'll need processing to recover contrast and saturation. So I photographed the diving kingfishers in manual setting with a fast shutter (1/4000th) and an appropriate aperture, with the image exposure resolved using auto ISO. No doubt the images would have been better in good light, but I'm happy enough with some of the shots
Male kingfisher perched at the back of the pond.
The male kingfisher focused on a minnow just a fraction of a second before launching itself into a dive
A composite image of a kingfisher dive. This scene accounts for 1/10th of a second
Success. The male heads to a perch to consume his catch.
The female kingfisher (orange lower beak) displays her stunning plumage.
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