Bird · River expedition
Common Kingfisher
Alcedo atthis
Uncommon
The kingfisher's famous blue is not a pigment at all. It is structural colour, made by the microscopic architecture of the feather scattering light, which is why the bird seems to change from turquoise to cobalt as it turns.
It hunts from a low perch over clear water, marking a fish, bobbing its head to judge the refraction, then diving with its eyes closed at the moment of entry. A pair excavates a nesting burrow up to a metre deep in a sandy riverbank.
For all its brilliance it is easily missed: most sightings are a straight, fast streak of electric blue an inch above the water, gone before the eye settles.
