The Tall Birder: Otterbourne - Kingfisher hide

Last autumn I had a less than stunning visit to the Nature Photography Hides near Droitwich for perched Kingfisher photos. On that visit there had been only one bird coming into the perches and it appeared infrequently during the morning and not at all during the afternoon. Light was also a problem, with the perches in shade for most of the day. However in the long periods of waiting for the bird to show, I learned from a fellow photographer about a hide that was reputedly much better with plenty of visits from multiple birds through the day. The place he was referring to was Pete Whieldon's setup at Otterbourne near Winchester.

For one reason or another, it took me some time to get round to trying this one. I was also keen to try something different with Kingfishers - diving shots which sounded to be considerably more challenging and required a special setup. To take full advantage of this opportunity, given its considerable cost, I was determined to visit on a bright, sunny day. So with a consistent forecast for sun virtually all day, every day, this week, I enquired about availability and was told there was no problem for either the Friday or Saturday.

For this hide, you need to arrive at 07:30 which required a pretty early start, but at least I avoided the worst of the rush hour traffic and arrived dead on time.

Pete met me on arrival, unlocked the gate to let me in, and showed me to the hide which was only about a 1min walk from the car. I had the place to myself, and I was able to setup two cameras and lenses, with one (100-400 f5.6 II) trained on the spot below the perch where the birds dive, and the other (500f4 II) mounted on a gimbal head and plate provided by Pete.

Having shown me the setup, Pete then departed and I sat down to wait for some action. It didn't take long for the first visit, which was followed by many repeats by up to 3 different birds. I counted a total of about 20 dives between about 08:15 and 15:40 when I departed. Even during the quietest part of the day (unsurprisingly between about 12:00 and 14:00) there were visits about every hour, some with multiple dives.

However the snag about this hide was the shade cast by the surrounding trees, which were of course in full leaf. The perches and dive spot were only in full sun for a brief period mid morning and then again between about 12:15 and 15:30. It was during these periods that all my shots below came from. The others with the bird in shade and the background fully sunlit weren't up to much. Pete stated that once the leaves have fallen the lighting is considerably better here.

Nevertheless, overall this session a good start to the art of Kingfisher dive photography:

For a gallery of all the hi res photos from this trip, see this page on my website.