Fight of the Kingfishers

The Kingfishers have made a dramatic return to Ramsgate Harbour. At this time of year a few Kingfishers head to the coast to find somewhere sheltered with a good supply of food. Ramsgate Royal Harbour is just what they are looking for and competition between Kingfishers to grab a fishing territory can be fierce. This can in extreme cases result in them trying to drown each other. I’ve been lucky enough to witness territorial behaviour many times over the years but it is always great when others get to share this rare wildlife spectacle. This is what happened just recently during my harbour guided Kingfisher walk & talk.

I had arrived an hour early at the harbour and found the pair of young females already showing signs that they may come to blows. I had to leave them to meet up with Katriye at the other side of the harbour and just hope that they were still there when we got back. Thankfully they were and we were treated to over two hours of head bobbing, wing flapping, side shuffling and finally full on lunging attacks where they wrestled with each other. Wings flapping and grabbing each others beaks. Several passers by wondered what we were looking at so they too got to see what many people would otherwise miss. One lady took photos of my camera screen so that she could send them to her housebound mum. Most people are just surprised to see Kingfishers in a harbour, fishing in salt water as they are known to be fresh water birds found on rivers, canals and lakes.

It had already been a pretty remarkable week for wildlife as on another walk to Pegwell with Ryan just a few days earlier we watched a Kingfisher dive and catch a small crab and eat it in front of us. These are extraordinary moments that even seasoned professional wildlife watchers rarely get to see. We were very lucky indeed.

If you’d like the chance to see more of our local wildlife I do guided nature walks from Ramsgate to Pegwell Bay all year and Kingfisher Harbour walks from Sept till March. Contact me at keithross1@hotmail.com for more details.

Keith Ross @Ramsgatebirds – Follow me on Facebook or on Bluesky.