The past year I’d decided to spend most of my time down at the local river, if I’m honest I’d never really given this local river a real chance preferring to stay at local ponds and stillwater’s places where I’d heard there were thing’s to photograph, but one day I was walking the river and noticed a kingfisher hunting the river and rather oddly I’d been watching a few youtube video’s of Mike Lane and Simon Eardley seeing how they go about getting images of kingfisher’s so this set the mind going.

Kit wise I was going to use my Olympus camera with the 150-400 lens, I’d need my tripod and also I’d be using my Tragopan Lagopus B chair with it’s camo cover. The Tragopan hides are superb, the lagopus is not the lightest but it is bloomin comfy once set up and I’d thoroughly recommend it. One other thing I did need was a suitable stick that I could put out into the water, more of this later…

Anyway I’d mentioned my plan to Catherine and I don’t think she liked the idea of me going in the water to put a stick in it, so after numerous messages which went along the lines of you must be mad, are you really sure about this – weirdly Amanda my wife seemed quite ok with me going into the water, go figure lol.

An early morning was picked to try the post in the water out, the river I goto is fairly busy with Dog walkers so I thought early morning may be the best way forward.

Upon arriving I started to walk up the river with my backpack, Lagopus hide, I knew there was a post half way up between where I had parked and where I wanted to place the hide so I was going to pick this up en-route. Best laid plans and all, I hadn’t realised how heavy and big this post was but I had no other option so hoiked that up onto my shoulder and continued to plod along to where I was going to set-up.

Arriving at the location rather red faced, sweating profusely I dropped the post and following Simon’s and Mike’s advice set the hide up, then the tripod and camera before finally setting about putting the post in. When doing this you should always set the hide and camera up first before putting the post out in place; the reason being Kingfisher’s are notoriously nosy so if they see a new post it’s like a magnet to them, they have to come and investigate!

Stepping into the water to place the post I could feel the coolness of the water around my leg – it felt great, right up until the point my foot was wet and the water was just at the top of my wellington boot…note to self always check depth of water prior to stepping into a river.

Anyway walking into the water I could tell it was getting no deeper also it was very slow moving which helped matters, I placed the post vertically into the water, using a few other twigs to create a sort of tripod around the post to hold it up. I then found another twig to use as the horizontal twig for the bird to land on, looking back at the camera I could see the angle was wrong so I rotated the twig around so the camera would be at the right angle, because I wanted a darker back ground I set the twig slightly below the height of the camera and tripod as I could see this would avoid the leaves on the tree on the opposite bank.

Wading back to my hide I got out and sat on the bank, I took my boot off and emptied the water out, removed my sock and twisted that to remove the rest of the river water before putting them back on.

I’d just sat in my hide when Catherine came up walking the bank, I told her what had happened, will not say she chuckled at me and said I should have waited for her. Whilst Catherine went off and looked for a few different perches and for a walk further up the river I closed the hide and sat in the chair… A few moments passed and a kingfisher shot up the river and almost immediately flew back down before sitting on the branch that I had set up.

I moved my hand up to the shutter to take some pictures, the above being one of them.

The bird stayed for around 5 minutes then flew off, I stayed for around 4 hours more and it came back three or four times to the post, it was an amazing experience to have the Kingfisher so close to me.

One final word, setting a post up for a Kingfisher is the easiest way to get a good photo, but always bear in mind your own personal safety and always ensure that you leave the location where you’ve been as if you’d never actually been there.