On our Lunchtime walk two colleagues and myself sometimes get a glance of a kingfisher along a small stream not far from our place of work, most people have never seen a kingfisher so you may consider us lucky, so you may even be envious when I tell you on Wednesday we saw three, add to that we saw one on a branch, we stood and watched it from only about 2 metres away, it was looking at us but did not move, we soon discovered why as it was watching a fish, it suddenly flew towards us and plunged into the water only about a half a metre from our feet, and this was the day I did not have my camera with me.

What is amazing about this is the stream is in the city of Cambridge by the botanical gardens but also near a busy road and footpath and there are a lot of people walking past oblivious of these small but brightly coloured birds.

Yesterday we did not see one, but I put this down to being windy and the water had a lot of ripples on maybe making it hard to see any fish. So today I took my camera to work and the wind had dropped and it was sunny.

I can see how some people miss them, if you are not looking for them and they sit quite still then unless they fly and you see that electric blue catch the sun, then you may miss it.

But some may be easier to see

The easiest way to identify the sex of the kingfisher is by the bill, the female has  red on the base of the bill ( think of a female wearing lipstick )

The male has bill that is all black.

All in all we were lucky again, so if you are walking along a stream or canal look carefully in the undergrowth by the water as you may miss this jewel of the bird world.