Kingfishers

Black-capped Kingfisher
by Fred Rowe

Common Kingfisher

White-throated Kingfisher

With more or less four consecutive dry days, things locally have started to dry out and on Saturday morning it was possible to have a decent wander around, most of the patch is still underwater but the tracks and some of the bunds are starting to dry out. It was clear as soon as I got out of the house that in recent days there had been an arrival of Black-capped Kingfishers with at least seven noted. It turned out to be an excellent morning for kingfishers, with totals of 5 Common, 2 Stork-billed, 4 White-throated and best of all 2 Pied Kingfisher, a species i see rather infrequently.

At least 300 Oriental Pratincoles were again present, along with three much scarcer Small Pratincoles, i spent at least an hour trying to get some photos, but with all the paddies still flooded and all birds feeding relatively high over the fields all I ended up with was lots of photos of empty sky. Once again a few migrants were present, including 3 Asian Brown Flycatchers, female Yellow-rumped Flycatcher, Eastern Crowned Warbler, 3 Yellow Wagtails and 2 Red-rumped Swallows.

Other birds present included 6 Blue-tailed Bee-eater, Green-billed Malkoha, 3 Pintail and 4 Common Snipe, 12 Whiskered Tern, 3 Brown Shrike, 4 Eastern Stonechat, 2 Yellow-vented Bulbul and 2 Brown-throated Sunbird.

Many thanks to Fred and Marian Rowe for letting me use some of the photos in this and future posts.