Once again I headed out toward the shoreline of one of the many bodies of water here in the Kawarthas.

My plan was to photograph some of the ducks that pass through our area at this time of year, but shortly after reaching the shoreline I got waylaid by a familiar belted kingfisher. This kingfisher had just returned from its winter vacation down south, to the exact same cove and branches that it had left from in the fall.

It always amazes me how these birds can do that. On this morning she was very active. She was moving from tree to tree, always picking perches that gave her a good vantage point to scan the water for just about any small tidbit that would fit in her mouth. Belted kingfishers will eat small fish, frogs, crayfish or a variety of insects that they find in the water.

A belted kingfisher watches for fish from a tree branch over the water.

Kingfishers are the nemesis of many photographers. They can fly very fast and they generally do not let people get close to them. Most often before one can get a camera on them they fly away. Every once in a while though, one comes across a kingfisher that is busy with its activities and pays no attention to that nut with a camera. This was that kingfisher. It was busy diving for food fairly close to where I was shooting from and she was paying very little attention to me. That should make it easy to get good pictures, right? Well not exactly.

The kingfisher begins a dive.

It was easy to get the still shots while she was perched on a branch, but what I really wanted was those action shots of her diving for fish. Time after time she dove into the water, but each time she would scan the water for quite some time before she dove. That meant I had to keep the camera on her, with my fingers on the buttons for what seemed like an eternity. Then, with absolutely no warning, the kingfisher would go into action, plunging straight toward the water head first, going from a standstill to lightning speed in a wing beat.

And that wasn’t even the hard part. Each time she dove, even if it was from the same branch, she went a different direction. But I do like a challenge. It was almost impossible to keep the camera on her, so I tried a different approach. The shot I really wanted was her coming out of the water with a fish, so I would just watch with my eyes and have the camera ready to try to pick up the spot where she hit the water and get her coming out of the water. Trouble was she was just so fast!

The kingfisher emerges with a small insect after plunging into the water.

Most often I could not get on the spot fast enough to give the camera time to focus before she was already on her way back to the tree.

The kingfisher prepares to eat a fish it has caught.

I did manage to get on her a couple of times though and I am quite happy with the shots I got. It was a lot of fun trying. I won’t tell you how many shots got deleted when I got home, but let’s just say that recycle bin is pretty big.

© Peterborough Examiner