I took my small digital compact camera with me this morning walking the dog up the River Tweed and I was so glad that I did.
Approaching the park on the way back into town I noticed what appeared to be an object sitting on top of an old branch about 30 yards away. Still unsure as to what it was, as I was setting the camera up the object moved. My camera has a maximum zoom of 280mm and one glance at the LCD screen told me that the object was indeed that most elusive of birds, the Kingfisher!
I managed to take a couple of shots before it dived into the water and out again on to the branch. A few seconds later it flew off low across the water, past me heading upstream.
What I found surprising was that the bird was in quite an exposed location in full view of a footbridge about 100 yards away and there were quite a few people out walking at the time.
The original two pictures have been drastically cropped and enhanced to produce the two close- ups shown above.
