Halcyon Days
Each summer for the last 47 years I have had the privilege and pleasure of filming breeding Kingfishers. I have sat covered up in the middle of some of the Pennines most beautiful streams awaiting the arrival of that halcyon bird ,the Kingfisher. It gives me the same excitement now as it did all those years ago but this year I knew i was not going to get disturbed by a pack of Otter hounds as I was in 1973!
The challenge now is to film the young as they fledge and before they are driven away by the male Kingfisher. He does this the same day that they leave the tunnel and as you have no idea when the eggs were laid you have to go every day and waite for that magical moment. This weeks gallery shows the adults but by next week I hope to have filmed the young. click here
This year my local Little Owls have produced two young and one of these is this week’s blog photo. Global warming is not very kind to our Owls and regular periods of heavy rain can be fatal for for breeding Owls. Both pairs of Short Eared Owls that I was watching in the hills have failed and four pairs of Long Eared Owls have only fledged six young. The rains have also been unkind to two of the Kingfisher pairs that I watch with both nests flooded once again. More photos of the Little Owls are in the gallery.
In March one of the winter storms resulted in a collapse of the bank along a local stream. It resulted in the exposure of a ten foot high vertical sandy bank which was immediately discovered by Sand Martins upon their return in April. Now, three months on, twenty pairs of Sand Martins have reared two broods of young resulting in more than one hundred young fledging from what was initially a disaster area. Let nature take its course comes to mind. 