To me kingfishers are like the aurora borealis of the bird world. There is a lot of luck involved in seeing one, and the attempt can lead to a lot of frustration and dissapointment. I haven’t even seen the Aurora Borealis yet, and I’m almost forty. Despite knowing the difficulties that were in store for me, I set myself a goal of photographing a kingfisher.
But they’re also like the northern lights in another way. I remember quite well my first time seeing a kingfisher. It was at the Glen River Park, and there was one sitting beside the duck pond. As I approached, I must have spooked the bird, so they flew away. I was mesmerized. Seeing the kingfisher’s beautiful feathers catch the sunlight looked a lot to me like pictures of the auroras. It was magical. But sadly, no picture. Sometimes when I see a rare or elusive bird, I actually freeze. Desperate to get a picture, my brain tends to bark out a series of instructions. “Point the camera, slightly to the left, slightly to the right, up down, rotate slightly!” and I can’t follow what my panicked brain is telling me, so I sort of shut down. Then, to add further complication, something else I wanted to see started happening at the same time! Above my head, some angry gulls were chasing away a buzzard. A sight I always find very exciting, I like seeing the drama, the disputes, and the various arguments between birds. So that was it, I just stood there, frozen by a combination of panic that I wouldn’t get a shot, and wonder, at the sight of the kingfisher. Then I heard a bunch of gulls screaming at a buzzard! There would be no photograph of either, too much was happening at the same time!
So why are kingfishers so hard to photograph? Well, allow me to argue that they are the perfect storm of difficult bird photography. To the point where I want to hire the actor playing the meteorologist from the film The Perfect Storm, to after I describe how difficult they are to photograph, to say, “It would be, the perfect storm.” I bet you misremember him as saying, “It’s the perfect storm.” I bet you also misremember this quote as being said by George Clooney. Well, human memory doesn’t always work properly! Darth Vader never said, “Luke, I am your father.”
So, why are kingfishers, “the perfect storm” of bird photography? Well, the first point is that they are really fast. This by itself only puts them at a moderate level of difficulty. A lot of birds are fast flyers. Blue tits and long tailed tits zip from branch to branch in a tremendous hurry and I’ve still gotten photographs of both. The second point is that they are a smallish bird, so hard to see at a distance, that blends in quite well with the vegetation on the riverbanks that they like to spend time on. So, if they’re in flight, they’re likely to be too fast, and, if they’re sitting motionless, there’s a good chance you won’t even notice one.
So, very fast, and good at blending in, two points that create difficulties for sure. But I’m still arguing these two points only puts them somewhere between “moderate” and “high” difficulty. It’s the last point, working in combination with the first two, that really gives them the title of “the perfect storm” of difficulty, a title I’m going to insist that all ornithological organizations worldwide promptly adopt.
Buzzards are what I would describe as a moderate difficulty photography target. If you’ve been at bird photography a few weeks, I wouldn’t expect you to have photographed one yet, but a few months, sure, you’ve probably managed to photograph not just of one, but possibly a few. And this is because, buzzards, despite being wary of humans and preferring to stay away from us, have regular places where they like to hang out. If I see a buzzard on a high tree branch, I can just come back to that tree tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, and there’s a 50% chance or higher that the buzzard will be there again.
With kingfishers, it’s different. I don’t know if this is specific to Cork City, maybe it’s different in other parts of Ireland, but kingfishers, by and large, don’t seem to have regular hang out spots. So, when you see that amazing flash of blue out of the corner of your eye, and part of you knows it’s already too late to even bother getting the camera ready, you know there’s a good chance, a really good chance, that returning to that same spot tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, probably won’t yield any results. So the only instructions for finding a kingfisher really seem to be.
Step 1: Wander around near a river. Step 2: Wander around near a river. Step 3: Wander around near a river.
However, after my first sighting of a kingfisher, I did spot one twice more in the same spot (or two in the same spot, you never can tell.) This would yield further disappointment however.
I spent three weeks staying near Courtmacsherry during the Christmas period, and, while in Timoleague, to my surprise, I saw a kingfisher at the duck pond! I was super quick with the camera, and, it might be technically true that I did manage a photograph, I’m not sure, because the photograph was an utterly incoherent blurry mess. No luck this time.
But, as my stay in Courtmacsherry was coming to an end, when I had about three days left in the area, I saw a kingfisher again, by the Timoleague duck pond again! And again, not even a blurry mess this time, the kingfisher was gone. So, I had apparently found the holy grail of kingfisher findology, an area where they regularly hang out, but, it was all for nothing, because soon I’d be returning to the city. If I knew sooner in my stay near Courtmacsherry that this was a place where kingfishers liked to hang out, then maybe I could have made more concrete plans to get a photo of one. But I knew too late, and this would sadly be a missed opportunity.
So that was three sightings so far without a photo. The next sighting was quite ambiguous, in the Glen River Park, I saw a bird move extremely fast over the river, but so fast did the bird move that I couldn’t even tell what species it was. So three, maybe four sightings, but still the kingfisher was too fast each and every time. But soon, my luck would change, and it would all be thanks to a ring billed gull!
I’d gotten a tip off that a ring billed gull was in Fitzgerald’s Park, a species of bird I haven’t photographed yet. I had went to Fitzgerald’s park earlier, and didn’t see the bird, but I made another journey to Fitzgerald’s Park, and there was the ring billed gull, just sitting quietly at the duck pond!
Ring billed gull, I have so much to thank you for!
Had I not known the ring billed gull was there, there was a good chance I wouldn’t have gone to Fitzgerald’s Park that day, and as a result, never wandered down to the Lee Fields, and I would never have seen the kingfisher. Because once you’re in Fitzgerald’s park, you’re only a very short hop from the Lee Fields, and it’d be a shame not to go down and see the buzzards, and the adorable swan family!
So I went down to the Lee Fields. No luck seeing any buzzards that day, but I did encounter the swan family!
They grow up so fast!
The adult plumage is really coming in!
Parent and child together.
You may have noticed that the juvenile swans look very grown up, they look super mature with their white plumage coming in. And that’s why, this is a moment of sadness and also joy, because this adorable family of mute swans is now breaking up.
There were originally two adults, and five juveniles. When I visited them in late 2024, there were four juveniles, then later in the year, three, and now, two. The parents decided that it was time for three of them to go off and start their own lives, and sent them away. They will soon, probably in the next few weeks, decide the same for the remaining two juveniles. It’s kind of sad, this swan family was just so heartwarming, but, it’s also kind of happy, because the juveniles will now hopefully start their own families! I encountered one of the juveniles up the river, and they seemed to be just relaxing in the sunshine.
A neck to rival a giraffe’s neck!
By the way, mute swans aren’t mute. They’re just quiet in comparison to other birds. The way I realized this, many years ago, is actually kind of amusing. I think it must have been ten years ago or more, at the Lough a dog start barking at a mute swan. And the mute swan started hissing at the dog! This made me see mute swans in a new way, sure, they have a very angelic appearance, but do not get on the wrong side of them!
I recorded the mute swan family a few weeks ago, sadly road noise is a horrible problem for bird recording, so I hope the sound comes through this absolute mess of car engines.
It’s actually a really interesting sound. Mute? More like, eh, not mute! I’ll show myself out….
Then I took a walk up the Curragheen river greenway, and encountered one of my favourite birds, the heron! This one was walking slowly through the vegetation, moving quietly like a trained assassin.
Amazing dinosaur assassin bird!
The greenway is, one the best places to escape noise, and when I say one of the best, it can be still quite noisy. Because the world we live in is quite screechy and immoral. But I did get a nice bird recording along the greenway.
A robin! I have a lot of recordings of robins. They have such an unbelievably sweet song, and you can hear them singing everywhere! What an amazing treasure that humanity gets to experience, wonderful singers that are so easy to find!
So at this point you’re probably thinking, you’ve talked about a ring billed gull, mute swans, a heron and a robin, why don’t you tell us about the kingfisher you goddamn coward?
Okay, calm down! I’m about to get to the kingfisher. The reason I felt all these other bird encounters were relevant, is because, if I hadn’t encountered these birds, in this exact order, there’s a good chance I’d have never encountered the kingfisher. Think of the precise order of events that led to World War I, except, you know, seeing a bird instead of millions of people dying.
So after the Curragheen river greenway I decided to take yet another walk through the Lee Fields. I can’t remember what I was hoping to see or hear, perhaps I was hoping I would see the buzzards this time, perhaps I was hoping there would be a part of the Lee Fields sufficiently quiet for bird recording, all I know is, I decided, after already having quite a number of encounters with birds, I was starting to feel a bit tired, and maybe now I should head for home, so I walked back through the Lee Fields towards my bike, and then.
On the opposite bank of the River Lee, that amazing flash of blue! The kingfisher!
Was there any point in following the bird? They move so fast that the kingfisher could already be anywhere. But I was determined. I knew I could well be wasting my time, but I just decided, I wanted a photograph of a kingfisher more than anything, so, I stared at the opposite river bank, harder than I’ve ever stared at anything. I walked along, just staring, possibly without blinking, at that river bank, and there was the kingfisher sitting on a branch!
As I set up my camera, I was actually having a quite significant anxiety attack, the kingfisher could fly away, at any moment, never to be seen again. For the first few photos, the camera just refused to focus, and I was getting really frustrated. Why now, of all times, was the camera refusing to co-operate? And then, finally, I got this.
YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The kingfisher! For months, this bird had eluded me, and finally, I had a clear picture of this wonderful animal. I was making audible vocal stims of joy that may have scared the other humans, but I didn’t care, I was so happy, I could just feel a surge of joy through my whole body, it felt like there was electricity flowing through my brain, I felt, amazing!
If I hadn’t done exactly what I did on that day, go to Fitzgerald’s Park to see the ring billed gull, go up the Lee Fields to see the mute swans, go up the Curragheen river greenway, and then, decide to take a further walk up the Lee Fields, how long would it be before I saw a kingfisher? Weeks, months, years, decades? Perhaps never see one? I have no idea. It could be, I would see one two weeks later, or that I’ll never see one again. For example, I’ve only seen a linnet once and once only, and that was several months ago, and I’m not sure they’re even as elusive as kingfishers. How long would I be waiting if I hadn’t seen one that day?
My brain and body were working at 1000% capacity because of the excitement of it all, so I went home, and gradually was able to power down for the night after the sheer joy of it all. But what a fantastic day!
Ponderings Of An Autist 