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I've been saving this blog up for you. Gradually collecting information and beautiful pictures....
It's time to turn the spotlight on to the little kingfisher that has been hanging around the Wildlife Pools and thrilling so many people!
If you come to see this gorgeous little bird - and you should! - make sure that you ask us in the Visitor Centre about which pools to check and we'll happily point you in the right direction.
 Here's the little bird, taken today, by my manager, Craig. (He said he'd fire me if I didn't use his pic! I got him back for this victimisation by refusing to make him a cup of tea.... but he fired me for that too.....)
This bird began to be spotted on the same pools in late autumn and come December we were having daily sightings. Happily, this continues to be the case! So we've had chance to get to know it a bit and have come up with a bit of educated guess-work to understand more.
We have seen a couple of things about it which lead us, first of all, to believe that this is a juvenile female. There has been a slightly darker band showing across her chest, which is one of the signs of juvenile plumage and she has been developing a strongly coloured base to her beak. This lets us know she's a she, because the males have completely black bases to their beaks.
The time that she appeared has also led us to believe that she is a juvenile and quite possibly, one of the young from the resident pair which nest in the river bank at the back of Old Moor, between us and our Bolton Ings site and which we see fishing on our reserve. Kingfishers are feisty birds and strongly territorial. The wardens have seen aggressive behaviour with birds chasing others along the stretch of river mentioned, fairly regularly over the last month or two. It would be expected that an adult pair would chase their grown youngsters away over autumn and winter, to make them find their own patch. This means that they are free to raise another brood in the spring.
So our little one may well have found a handy place, not too far away from where she grew up. The Wildlife Ponds has not previously been an area which has been regularly fished by the adults, so they seem to be giving her a bit of space, with her far enough away from them for them to be happy! And boy, has she been making the most of the fishing opportunities on those pools......
 Here she is, sat on a reed mace head, improvising a perch. Note the darker band across her chest.
 There she goes!!
 She's back!
 Mission accomplished!! Thanks to Ian Butler for this fantastic sequence. He's got a kingfisher addiction now, you know and has to keep coming back to try to get more great shots. Fine by me!! :)
Our warden team put a perch on the pool side for her, using a dead branch of silver birch. Kate (our assistant warden) swears that the height of the perch has dropped by atleast 20 cm or so, because she's getting so plump from all the fish she's eating! People see her catch several every day.
We don't know how much longer we'll have her with us though. She has obviously found a good patch to wait out winter and stay full. After a few days of frozen water, she returned. As spring gets under way though, the urge to try and find a mate and nest will take over. There aren't any banks in the pool which she has been using, so no potential nest sites there.....
I would like to point her to the fantastic sand martin bank at this stage (as covered in last night's blog), showing her all the wonderful, ready made tunnels with nest chambers at the end!! We know that kingfishers have taken up the opportunity to nest in them on other sites.... It would certainly be wonderful to have her stay here! There is the not-so-small matter of finding a mate though, first of all and that means taking to the river really, following the waterway. Let's hope a potential suitor comes to find her, then, before she goes to find him!!
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