I have a soft spot for kingfishers as they fuse my fascination with birds and fishing. Estuarine and coastal walks thus become kingfisher spotting missions. Their foraging habits change with the seasons and winter is a prime time for them to search mudflats for crabs. They hunt from favoured perches but are wary and often won’t tolerate a close approach. A month ago on a journey back from Northland we stopped for a recharge (coffee and car) and went for a walk along the edge of the Whangarei harbour. I spotted a young Kōtare/Sacred kingfisher sitting on a rock with a crab held in its bill. Usually captured crabs are quickly knocked into submission and swallowed so it was unusual to see this bird just sitting looking a bit seedy. It had’t flushed as one usually would as we walked past so I stopped and took out my camera to observe. It remained even when an inquisitive and rather loud primary school child on break came up to ask me what I was doing. After 10-15 minutes the bird ejected a pellet of crushed crab shell while keeping control of his crab and then swallowed the crab and resumed hunting.
Nothing in the sequence allowed for anything more than a record of what had happened but it was behaviour I didn’t recall seeing before so I stored it away for future reference.
On a return trip to Northland I had the opportunity to watch and photograph kingfishers for a while in some decent light. They behaved as normal, regularly flying down , snatching crabs, subduing and then swallowing them. When I saw one stop on a rock just holding a crab I suspected what was likely to happen.
By patiently waiting and watching I managed to get a sequence of the pellet regurgitation. Unfortunately this kingfisher had to drop his crab in the process of getting up a huge pellet to make room for more.
This gave an opportunity as he flew down to retrieve it before promptly swallowing it and continuing his foraging.
My main pleasure is being out in nature observing the world. Photography, for me, is a reason to be intentionally focussed on the details with purpose to create memories of those occasions. Seeing the details of behaviour and understanding what is happening gives me joy. Noticing behaviours that I can then use to predict and anticipate what a wild bird will do to plan an image can be very satisfying. It’s amazing what you can see by just looking.
Photos with Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z 800mm f6.3 VR S + 1.4x teleconverter (1120mm f9 equivalent)
