The secret life of kingfishers captured by Yorkshire wildlife enthusiast Jane Steele

One of the great joys of life is walking beside a Yorkshire waterway and catching a sudden glimpse of iridescent blue as a kingfisher works its patch.
Jane has been capturing the elusive kingfishers on cameraJane has been capturing the elusive kingfishers on camera
Jane has been capturing the elusive kingfishers on camera

So when I realised that Jane Steele, from my local wildlife group, was producing a series of great pictures of them I decided it was time to meet with her and find out how.

Jane has been interested in wildlife since she was a child in the 1970s exploring the rich variety of habitats that can be found in the outskirts of her native Bradford.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

These days it can take her several hours to walk a few short miles as she gets interested in everything that she spots along the way and, if a kingfisher is involved, she has been known to sit quietly in one spot for a couple of hours.

The beautiful birds are difficult to spotThe beautiful birds are difficult to spot
The beautiful birds are difficult to spot

Apparently, life is hard if you are a kingfisher. In a bad year up to 90 per cent of them can die over the winter if water freezes and cuts off their food supply.

In early February the surviving birds start courting and a male who has a secure territory with good hunting will show off the attractions by offering a female a nice plump fish. Head first for ease of swallowing.

Should the female accept then they will team up and the result will be 10 to 12 eggs being laid on perhaps two occasions in the year. Incubation takes three weeks and then for the next four weeks or so both birds have to work flat out to eat their own bodyweight every day whilst supplying each of the young with around 12 to 18 fish.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Not surprisingly it is rare for the entire brood to survive and it is even rarer for the ones that do reach adulthood to successfully find and defend a new stretch of water and learn how to fish it. The young aren’t given any fishing lessons by their parents and if they miscalculate flight angles they can drown before they learn all the necessary skills.

One of the skills they do learn early is how to avoid being spotted. That wonderful flash of blue doesn’t come from a pigment but is caused by light fracturing and reaching our eyes at a particular wavelength. The same trick that many butterflies employ. So Jane advises me that, if I want to spot one, I shouldn’t be looking out for something blue.

What the eye needs to focus on is the size and the shape, the places where they are likely to be, and the orange pigments which are more likely to be spotted on a stationary bird.

Alternatively, she advises me that I can spot the flash of blue and then sit on the river bank long enough for the bird to work its way all along a kilometre stretch of water and then work its way back.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It is also possible sometimes to pick out the sound of them calling which can resemble one long blow on a referee’s whistle. Something which my style of playing football gave me plenty of practice in recognising.

They are usually shy birds. Yet not always. I once visited a hill station in the cool high mountains of India and went rowing on a boating lake that was crowded with holidaymakers from nearby cities who were enjoying an outing on the water.

The courting couples were treated to a close-up display of diving kingfishers who regularly emerged holding tasty tiddlers. There were two different varieties but one of them was exactly the same glorious blue and orange colouring that is the mark of our own common kingfisher.

They live widely across Eurasia and if they can’t find a quiet place to fish they will make do with a noisy one rather than starve.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The same motivation means that when Jane visits a site often enough then the birds learn to stop worrying about her and get on with feeding themselves.

Nevertheless, it is important never to disturb a kingfisher or approach it too closely to get a picture. Jane uses a long telephoto lens and with that it is possible to get a decent close-up picture without bothering the birds.

The downside is that telephoto equipment is both expensive and cumbersome. Jane tells me that when she is following a particularly fine bird along a canal path she sometimes needs to run to keep up with it.

If you see a woman with a large camera running along a canal path whilst trying to zoom in on a bird please spare a thought for the trials and tribulations of the bird enthusiast. Let’s hope that she keeps to her track record of not actually falling into the canal before she gets the shot.