First of all, thanks to everyone for your generous praise of my latest Gallery photos and for the words of encouragement about the photo competition - it's much appreciated
UPDATE – 12th June 2007
Well folks, since my 1st June update we’ve been through another period of drama and turmoil on Kingfisher Island with a touch of violence and a hint of a love triangle thrown in for good measure, and all of it totally unscripted of course – East Enders and Big Brother eat your hearts out!
I’m afraid this update is a bit of an epic but as it covers nearly two weeks and there’s quite a lot to tell you about I hope you’ll bear with me.
Following the hatching of the eggs on the 30/31 May I visited the site at first light (shortly after 4am….yawn!) each morning for the next 3 days. The parent birds seemed to get into a routine very quickly and on each of these first 3 mornings after hatching, the day began with the male bringing in a series of small fish for the chicks’ breakfasts whilst Mum stayed in the nest brooding them. Then, between about 5.15 and 5.25am, the male would take over the brooding (one or other of the parents usually stays with the chicks for the first week) whilst Mum left the nest to fish for her own breakfast and, having spent the night in the nesthole with the young, to cleanse and preen herself. On each of those first 3 mornings the female was away from the nest for between 1 ¼ and 1 ½ hours and, on her return, the parents then took it in turns to go and catch more small fish for the young.
To show how precise their routine was – within 5 minutes either side of 8am the birds had brought in exactly 8 small fish on each of the 3 mornings!
On the Sunday (3rd June – the 4th day after hatching) I decided to have a bit of a lie in and to try to avoid the period of inactivity whilst the female was out breakfasting and making herself pretty by timing my arrival on site so as to be there just before she returned to the nest at about 6.30’ish.
To help me explain what happened next (and I’m sorry if it’s a bit over-complicated) I show below a plan of the nest site area - I hope it’s fairly legible
Soon after my arrival the male left the nest, took a cleansing dip and flew right around the island twice calling loudly all the time and as if to say ‘where is she’. He then briefly perched on some dead nettle stems just to the right of my dome hide before going back into the nesthole (ie. the 2nd nesthole, as shown on the plan).
About 10 minutes later the female landed on the nettle stems with a fish and called a couple of times. As she did so the male left the nesthole again calling aggressively and flying very near to the female before flying off. He clearly wasn’t happy about something and I presumed she’d been away from the nest longer than her usual 1 ¼ to 1 ½ hours and that he was giving her a bit of a telling off. The female then entered the nesthole with the fish.
15 minutes later (about 6.55am) the male flew across the site from left to right calling loudly but without landing. 10 minutes later he was on the nettle stems again without a fish and calling loudly again. He didn’t go near the nesthole and flew off again a few seconds later.
The male continued to behave strangely for the next 50 minutes - making frequent fly-bys, calling loudly all the time, landing briefly on various perches around the site but not bringing in any fish and not going anywhere near the nesthole. I hadn’t seen this sort of behaviour before and I began to wonder if the post-dawn arrival on site of my dome hide had spooked him, or if he was perhaps trying to teach his mate a lesson for having been away from the nesthole for longer than the considered acceptable
By 8.05am I was getting a little worried as the parent birds had brought in only 1 fish for the youngsters during the 1 ½ hours I had been watching, as opposed to the ‘8 fish by 8am’ routine of the previous 3 days as mentioned earlier.
Minutes later the male landed on the perch nearest to the nesthole but showing no signs of interest in it. The female remained in the nest, having now been in there for some 1 ½ hours since her return at about 6.40am. I then heard another bird calling from the far side of the island and the male immediately flew round there – THE 2nd MALE WAS BACK
(see my update of 9th May).
This was presumably why the resident male had been behaving so strangely and as he got round to the other side of the island both males began calling very loudly and aggressively.
There then followed a ferocious aerial dogfight with the two males chasing one another all around and above the island screeching constantly and in an impressive flying display of climbs, dives, twists and turns in very close formation, sometimes just above the surface of the water and at other times above the tree tops (the island is quite densely wooded). Even after studying Pete’s (eeyore’s) Advice Sheet on Photographing Birds in Flight – thanks again Pete
- I soon realised there was no way I was going to get a shot of this action. The aerial battle continued almost unabated for some 40 minutes after which the resident male landed on the perch near the nest hole looking rather ruffled – see photo below – in fact at one point it appeared that one of his feet may have been severed
(but, as it turned out, thankfully not)
No sooner had he landed when the intruder flew directly at him with his beak wide open and then began to hover around him screeching very aggressively – I did, however, manage to get two photos (of fairly poor quality I’m afraid) showing this behaviour –
The resident male was perched just out of shot in the above photo and faced with this savage attack quickly retreated with the intruder close behind.
How you may ask did I know one male from the other? Well the ‘jizz’ of the two birds was noticeably different with the intruder adopting a very upright and aggressive posture each time he appeared on one of perches around the site – see photo.
His colouring was also noticeably brighter than the resident male, presumably because his plumage hadn’t been sullied by the task of having dug two nestholes in recent months!
By 8.45am things had calmed down and the intruder re-appeared on the perch near the nesthole. The female then came out of the nesthole and flew off followed by the intruder. By 9.20am the female was back at the nesthole (but without any fish) followed two minutes later by the intruder which went into the nesthole very briefly before re-emerging and flying off.
I then saw nothing further of any of the birds during the 55 minutes or so until 10.15am when I left the site. By this time I hadn’t seen the resident male for about 1 ½ hours and I began to fear that the intruder had driven him off or, even worse, that he was mortally wounded. I was also extremely worried by the fact that during the whole 3 ¾ hours I had been on site I had seen only 1 fish delivered to the young. In fact, I was almost convinced that yet again the breeding efforts of the resident pair had been disrupted to such an extent that the 2nd nest would probably be abandoned
I was on site again by 5.20 am the next morning (Monday 4th June), desperate to see the resident male alive and well and hoping that things were back to normal. However, at the time of my arrival and unusually the female was already perched outside the nesthole and a few minutes later a male (I believe the intruder) arrived alongside her with a fish which he offered to her. This was not good news and indicated courtship behaviour between the new male and the female.
At first the female seemed reluctant to accept the fish offered by the new male but after a minute or two she took it and then flew off with him, with neither bird showing any interest in the nesthole. However, half an hour later the female was back at the nesthole with quite a large fish which she took inside? This fish was much larger than the ones they had previously brought in for the chicks and it occurred to me that the resident male may be holed up in the nesthole recovering from yesterday’s onslaught and that the female had perhaps brought the fish for him – of course I had no way of knowing
Between about 5.50 am and 6.30am the new male came back to the perch near the 2nd nesthole 4 times. He didn’t bring fish on any of these visits and showed no interest in wanting to enter the nesthole. I took a photo of him on his 6.30 visit and, on zooming in on my camera’s LCD screen, noticed that he had mud on his beak. Obviously this indicated nest building and strengthened my fears that the 2nd nest had been or was about to be abandoned, with the new male and the female presumably digging yet another nesthole elsewhere.
I decided to move positions from my dome hide to my on-site hide in order to get a more panoramic view of the site and to see if I could spot where the new male had been digging. As I entered the other hide I spotted the female flying round from the perch near the 2nd nesthole to the perch near the original (1st) nesthole. The male was already in that area apparently digging a 3rd nesthole just a couple of metres away from the original! After a few minutes the female took over the digging and then made a few cleansing dips before both birds flew off.
By now it was 7.10am and having had my fears that the birds were working on a new nesthole confirmed, I returned to my dome hide for a further 20 mins before leaving the site (to go to work) at 7.30. During that final 20 minutes I saw both birds again flying round to the area of the new nesthole and by now I was absolutely convinced that the original male had gone for good, that the 2nd nesthole and chicks had been abandoned and that the female and new male had started the whole breeding cycle afresh
My next visit to the site was on Tuesday evening (5th June). I was there for 1 ¼ hours from 7.15pm and to my astonishment I saw a male deliver two fish to the 2nd nesthole. On the 2nd occasion the male called as it approached the nesthole and the female emerged and flew off. Could it be that the new male had ‘adopted’ his predecessor’s nest/chicks or had the original male returned and resumed his position? Whatever the answer there were clearly still live chicks in the nest
I visited the site for a further two hours on the morning of Thursday 7th June and during that time again saw what I now believe to be the original male and the female deliver several fish to the 2nd nesthole. During a further 1 ½ hour visit on the evening of Friday 8th June I saw the male deliver no less than 5 fish to the nest in the space of 55 minutes, so whatever had happened between my leaving the site in some despair on Monday morning and my visit the following evening it now seemed that the original pair were back in the routine of feeding their young again! One can only speculate that either the original male had returned and had somehow managed to drive off the intruder or the female had eventually rejected his advances and he had left of his own accord. We shall never know the truth but the reconciliation of the original pair and the fact that they still have live chicks is clearly very good news indeed
I was on site again at first light on Saturday 9th June and during a period of about 2 hours and 20 minutes watched the parent birds bring in to the nesthole 6 quite large fish, much bigger than any I’d seen them bring before and as shown in a couple of my latest Gallery photos. I’m guessing this probably means there are at least 6 chicks
Of course the chicks were 10 days old by then but even so it seems difficult to believe they were capable of swallowing such large fish.
Well, this update is already much longer than I intended (my apologies for going on at such length
) but if I may I’ll tell you about one final incident from last Saturday morning – on my visit the previous evening I’d placed a new perch right in front of where I normally put my dome hide and the birds were already using it from first thing on Saturday. At one point the male landed on it and I got some of my best ever shots of him as he sat about 6 feet away from me – full frame in my camera with my lens closed down to only 135mm.
The male then dived into the water right in front of my hide, caught a fish, returned to the perch with it and started to bash it against the perch to kill it. As I waited for the rapid movements to stop so that I could capture a shot of the bird with the fish a Cormorant surfaced right beneath where the Kingfisher was sitting!! This obviously startled the Kingfisher (and me
) and it flew off with the fish. I didn’t even get chance to pan my camera down onto the Cormorant as it just had a quick look around before diving again and disappearing. What a shot it would have made to capture them both in frame – another for ‘the one that got away’ file
The Cormorant then continued to dive and re-surface all around the pool on the nest side of the island and, interestingly, I watched on two occasions as the male Kingfisher took up a high perch position in the overhanging trees from where he watched as the Cormorant swam around beneath the surface. The Kingfisher clearly realised that the Cormorant would be disturbing the fish and twice he dived into the water near to where the Cormorant had just been and came out with a fish – clever eh?
Finally, here’s another portrait photo from my ‘best ever’ series last Saturday morning. As I expect the young birds to leave the nest in about 10 days time I’ll probably leave my next update until then – unless there are any more dramas in the meantime of course!
Jeff
