Feather in the cap for kingfishers
MANY esteemed writers have eulogised kingfishers in poetry and prose, but no words are so warm and welcoming as those hanging over my study door. Kingfisher Cave, they declare, scribed on a strip of scrap wood and in an unsteady hand with the only shade of blue paint my nine year old grandson Benjamin could find in his father’s shed.
The sign declares the official headquarters of the Kingfisher Gang, a highly select and exclusive alliance established with the sole purpose of spotting the most exhilarating and dashing of British birds.
Membership is limited to its founder Benjamin, his seven year old sister Amelia, cousin Peggy, eight, with yours truly being granted honorary affiliation by virtue of being tasked with finding the flaming, bejewelled sprite said to grace the streams and brooks that meander near their homes.
Having been instituted during last year’s summer holidays but remaining unsuccessful in its letters patent, the Kingfisher Gang finally came of age the other day after many a failed mission.
Watching Benjamin’s beaming face as not one but two kingfishers sat sentinel on a bare willow sprig overhanging a small lake was as thrilling for me as seeing these wondrous creatures for the first time.
The scene on a sultry summer’s morning called to mind the country poet John Clare’s homage:
In coat of orange, green, and blue Now on a willow branch I view, Grey waving to the sunny gleam, Kingfishers watch the ripple stream For little fish that nimble bye
And in the gravel shallows lie.
A mighty “wow!” was Benjamin’s reaction, a fitting tribute in an age when computer generated wonders have diluted the imaginations of young people.
There was a hint of schadenfreude in the celebration as both Ben’s sister and cousin had missed the kingfisher as they had stayed home. I wonder when my grandchildren have their own grandchildren will kingfishers still ignite the waterways with their flaming chests and wings?
For birds that streak such arrowstraight flights, the scientific graphs that denote their fortunes undulate in the style of woodpeckers. A downward trajectory in kingfisher numbers during the 1980s was followed by an optimistic rising pattern in the 1990s, only for numbers to start dipping again after the turn of the millennium. Looking at the British Trust for Ornithology’s Birdtrends reports there are hints of another buoyant period looming. Successive mild winters are bound to have been a boon for kingfishers, a species that suffers severe losses when waterways are frozen.
That said, the kingfisher is listed as an “amber species” of conservation concern and was at one time being monitored by the Rare Breeding Birds Panel. According to the Population Estimates of Birds in the UK report recently published in the journal, British Birds, between 3,850 and 6,400 pairs are nesting in their riverine burrows each spring.
Although kingfishers seem stoic in the face of relentless concrete sprawl I am fearful that too much development will eventually impact on the kind of idyllic waterways kingfishers crave and which enthralled our greatest writers.