Electric Blue (Kingfisher at Top Hill Low)

We visited THL yesterday and in the morning visited North Marsh East Hide a new replacement hide last year and where work has been undertaken to attract King Fishers. We have spent 30 - 40 minutes previously hoping to see a KF. Yesterday after 10 minutes I was looking out the south facing window trying to see Reed warblers when I turned round and saw this on one of the perching rails.

We then got treated to about 30 minutes of this male KF perching in the same spot, listening to overhead aircraft (really), catching and dispatching a fish before moving onto another pole briefly before flying away a real treat. Well done to the warden and staff at THL who have made such great improvements these last couple of years.

I had time to fit my 2x converter, and remove it again as the bird was slightly too far of for my lens at 500mm, my converter means you have to manually focus, unfortunately when the fish was being dealt with I had the converter on and had the shutter speed far too slow. These first shots are at 500mm, I will post the 'better' of my pictures through the converter separately but the sharpest were those at 500mm, the camera on the tripod for the best part of the time. This was a great experience and opportunities like this are all too rare.