Скачать или смотреть Day One - Searching for the Ramsgate Kingfisher - Winterwatch 2015

Kingfishers have been seen for many years around Ramsgate Harbour. Certainly longer than I have been bird watching in the area. Most of my sightings had been pretty brief with usually just fleeting glimpses of them at the port or around the old Pegwell hoverport. On moving from Ramsgate East cliff to West cliff in Feb my bird watching patch changed and around Sept I started noticing a Kingfisher flying up from Pegwell hoverport past west cliff and onto Ramsgate harbour. I observed that it had favoured areas to perch so set out to try and film it close up. These birds will rarely let you approach before flying off so I realised that the one perch I could get close to was an old iron post that was washed up on the beach just below the concrete promenade. I could setup my camera on a tripod on the promenade, let it record and move back without the bird seeing me. I was very lucky and on my first attempt I managed to get some nice footage of it on the post, coughing up a pellet & catching a shrimp.

   • Kingfisher - Ramsgate - 2nd Oct 2014  

Not long after wildlife cameraman Richard Taylor-Jones contacted me with the idea of including the Kingfisher in a film about a winter coastal walk from Dover to Ramsgate for BBC Winterwatch. He then announced it as his next project on BBC Autumnwatch.

Well as luck would have it I never saw the bird again for over 20 days. Then eventually one morning before sunrise I saw it already on the west cliff post. I contacted Richard. Now was the time...

This is my unofficial behind the scenes video diary of our attempt to locate and film the bird for BBC Winterwatch 2015....enjoy :-)