8.25 - Kingfisher

8.25.12 Kingfisher • © Margaret Helthaler

I began bird watching the summer I was ten years old. I found a bird book when I was visiting my grandmother and I would sit on the front porch and refer to its pages as I watched the Barn Swallows swoop along the fields or caught sight of the flashy orange breast of a Baltimore Oriole. However, the discovery that excited me the most was when I was able to determine that the persistent trilling call I’d hear from the nearby creek, made by a bird resembling an oversized blue jay, belonged to a Kingfisher. So it was particularly appropriate that the pinnacle of my bird-watching experience that summer occurred when I was standing on the bridge spanning the creek and a Kingfisher landed on the railing a mere three feet away with a small fish clasped within it’s shiny black beak. For a breathless moment I stood in awe, taking in every detail of the sight before me. To this day, when I hear the trilling call of a Kingfisher, I am reminded of that moment.