Tag Archives: kingfisher

Struggling With the Kingfishers

There are two birds that have a good record of thwarting me when I am trying to get shots of them.  The Flicker in one and some recent luck with them will appear on this blog before too long. The other is the kingfisher, and I was hoping that I might have some better luck when Nancy and I headed over to Ballard Locks one Sunday afternoon. There are quite a few kingfishers that live along the water at the locks, and they aren’t so tricky to find because their calls are loud and distinctive and are often a sign that they are flying or about to. They aren’t the stealthiest of birds.

Then again, they don’t need to be too stealthy. They are quick and agile so I imagine that they can do well when it comes to avoiding predators. I don’t know if they have many predators but good luck to them if they do since it would seem to be hard work to get one. Photographing them is hard enough! Getting good shots of them is tricky because they are small and fast. You need a long lens, but you also need to get them in the viewfinder to track them. I was making use of technology to overcome inability. The 200-800 meant I had plenty of reach and the R3 has some amazing focusing capabilities. Basically, I had no excuse because I was the weak link in the chain.

The birds were not totally cooperative, but they did give me a fair chance. Most of the time they would be flying off in the distance, but they would come close sometimes. Then they would trick me. One would take off and fly away and I would be busy track it as another flew right in front of me. I was convinced that they were taunting me. On a few occasions, though, I managed to get a tracking solution on one long enough to get focus and a few shots. The results were surprisingly pleasing. US kingfishers are not as colorful as European kingfishers and they are a bit larger, but the shape is similar, and they do make for an interesting subject. I’ll have to come back on a sunny day sometime to have another go.

The Kingfisher is Flying but not a Demo Yet

The introduction of the Kingfisher to Canadian Air Force service has been a bit drawn out and is not yet complete.  This version of the Airbus C295 has some customization which has yet to be fully worked out.  However, there are a number of the aircraft delivered including at Comox AFB on Vancouver Island.  For the air show, there was one on the ramp and another was up and flying in the morning.  It was not performing a demo, but it flew a lot of patterns before the show got underway.  Therefore, I had my first exposure to a flying Kingfisher.  They should be a more regular sight in the Pacific Northwest in due course.

Kingfisher Fishing Successfully

When we visited Seattle not long after moving back to the US, I got a shot of a kingfisher as it sat on a cable at the locks in Ballard.  I guess this must be a good spot for kingfishers because, when we went down to see the boats, I found another kingfisher hanging out near where we parked.  The sound that they make is pretty distinctive and I heard it before I saw it.  It was sitting on a branch for quite a while before it dived down, grabbed something out of the water and landed on one of the wooden guides along the water to enjoy its snack.  I will have to spend more time down there and see if I can get some better shots of these speedy little critters.

The Kingfishers Stop Being Shy For A Change

There are some kingfishers that live around Juanita Bay but I have never previously been even remotely close to them.  They seemed to live around the outlet of the creek and head straight out into the bay so they were but a speck from where I was.  However, for some reason, a pair of them were out and about.  When I was on one pier, one flew right past me and I was too slow to realize what it was.  However, luck was on my side.

It was heading for another one over the other side of the inlet and they then started spiraling around before heading back towards me and then straight overhead.  I was lucky enough to get a few shots of them as they went by.  I headed around the inlet later on and they were flying again.  This time one landed on the deck where I had previously been.  No doubt, that wouldn’t have happened if anyone had still been there but it was funny to see.

Vijay’s 727

wpid11037-AU0E8953.jpgPaul and I had a day of exploring and part of this took us up to Sacramento. We checked out things at Mather to see what was going on. Often the interesting things are not what is flying but what is parked up and this proved to be the case with a Boeing 727. It was parked alone at one end of the field. The area it was parked in was kind of interesting as we stopped the car on what had clearly once been a hangar which was now demolished. We were trying to work out how big the hangar was and what the USAF might have kept in it when Mather was an active base. However, the 727 was our primary focus. It was in Kingfisher colors and carried the registration N727VJ. The boss of Kingfisher is Vijay Mallya so this was obviously once his personal jet. It has winglets fitted but the paint looked a bit faded so it might have been out of use for some time. I suspect he has something a bit newer these days.

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