The Kingfisher

Blandford Press. Very Good/Very Good. 1982. Hard Back. 8vo 0713711701 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. Illustrated with colour and b/w photographs. 120 pages clean and tight. The kingfisher is arguably Britain's most beautiful and spectacular bird. While it is not particularly rare, it is seldom seen (except as a fleeting glimpse of blue) and few people ever get the chance to study it from close quarters. It is probably this elusive quality which has caused the kingfisher to be lauded by poets, mysticised by folklore and used constantly as a subject for cards and ornaments of all kind. The combination of the bird's dazzling plumage and remarkable life style - it spends most of the autumn battling with its neighbours, nests deep underground and catches its food by diving head first into icy cold water - make it a fascinating and rewarding subject for close study. This book is based on the author's seven-year study of the bird. It covers the complete life cycle of the kingfisher and describes in detail the bird's habitat, its strong territorial instincts, courtship behaviour, nest-building, the hatching and development of the young and its outstanding fishing abilities. The book is lavishly illustrated with 66 of the author's unique colour photographs which show the kingfisher in every stage of its development. The photographs of the bird underwater, and of the nest chamber, are of exceptional interest, as are the portraits of the young hand-reared birds, which were rescued from their flooded nest hole and eventually returned to the wild. All of the photographs were taken under licence as the kingfisher is protected in the U.K. where this study was made. Although the kingfisher, Alcedo aft/us, is a British and northern European bird, it has relatives all over the world, including the Australian kookaburra, and David Boag's study is bound to fascinate ornithologists and natural historians everywhere. Furthermore, his fascination for the kingfisher has prompted him to develop several interesting photographic techniques, all of which are described in an appendix. .