Ratel's photos #65 Water Birds-4

The common kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) also known as the Eurasian kingfisher, and river kingfisher.

Short-legged pretty boy! Very bright and beautiful plumage from above, blue-turquoise, iridescent. Very bright and beautiful blue-turquoise and iridescent plumage. And a fiery reddish abdomen.

Noticed me :)

It is listed in the Red Book of Tomsk Oblast. And not only in Tomsk. It is also present in the red books of the Tula, Omsk, Chelyabinsk regions.

The English name is Kingfisher. That is, the king is a fisherman :)

It is not difficult to guess that this fisherman is fed on small fish.

Here you can see how he sits on a branch looking for prey.

Seeing the fish, he flies to this place, hangs in the air like a hummingbird and ...

And then he dives under the water. After a couple of seconds flies out of the water with prey.

I did not have time to shoot him with the prey. Here he ate the fish, and stretched out to fit it :)

I spent 3 days on it. On the first day, I accidentally noticed it. I sat resting, hiding under a bush. Suddenly, I see something blue flying over the water. I immediately realized that this is kingfisher.
In the second I went to make sure he was living here, or just flew by. It turned out that he was again in these parts. And again I was resting, sitting on the bank of the river, a kingfisher flew from behind a bush, did not expect to see me, was frightened, squeaked and flew back.
On the third day I already hunted for him. I had to jump into the river and wade it to the other side where I saw it.

Kingfishers are timid and rarely come to their eyes. Probably I was lucky, my camouflage suit led him astray :)

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• Nikon D5200
• Tamron SP AF 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Di VC USD

#ornithology #birds #whalepower