On the 9th November a local fisherman was fishing on the banks of the River Ribble,when he made the discovery of lifetime.....a male Belted Kingfisher.The bird showed on and off in the vicinity for a while,before disappearing due to raising water levels,no doubt making fishing difficult for the bird,it was then,thankfully re-discovered nearby on the River Darwen,a tributary of the River Ribble at Samlesbury.
An early start along with the 2 Tims(Cowley and Ishwerwood),saw us heading over to attempt to see this 5th record for Britain of this North American species.
On the journey over,the good news was the bird was still present,thank god for that and it made things a little less nervy.
After arriving on site,Tim skillfully parked up in the very limited parking available,we quickly got the gear together and we were off.
It was a bit of a hike up hill and then across two muddy fields to where the bird had been seen and we arrived to the news it had showed,but wasn't showing currently.The viewing was very difficult,looking through trees and downwards to the River,but i managed a very brief view of the bird as it shot down from it's perch.
More searching for the bird ensued and i managed to find it again,but it was really difficult to get on it and there was a bit of pushing and bolshy birders to deal with which wasn't great to be fair.
The bird then flew again and landed in an area where it could thankfully be seen by everyone present,as it caught a fish and proceeded to eat it's catch.
What a whopper of a bird!,i had only ever seen our native Kingfisher and this was probably 2.5 times bigger,being more Jackdaw like in size.He was a powder blue over the upperparts,with a long,shaggy,punky crest,long,quite broad,all black bill,white spot infront of the eye on the lores and a broad white collar.The underparts were pure white with a three pronged breast band and i could see some barring on the closed tail,this being more noticeable when he was seen in flight,along with the white flashes in the wings.....what a cracking bird!.
He then flew a little further along the river and was then a little more distant,but it was great to see the large size of the bird in flight.He then flew again and disappeared briefly,at this point we saw our native Kingfisher nearby and it was great to appreciate the size difference.
A couple more distant views of him sat under a Willow before he disappeared again,then we saw him perched really high up in a dead tree providing our final view of him before we had to leave unfortunately.
I did manage to take some distant phonescoped video,but unfortunately the light wasn't ideal and all the footage isn't up to my usual standard,but i still got something and have a record of this fantastic bird
I was really pleased to see this,my 7th new bird of the year,what an amazing one 2021 has been for rare birds.
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