It is hard to return from vacation, we rode for 970 kilometers on Saturday, rain is here now…

Let’s look at the bright side, this is a good occasion to work on the pictures taken lately.

Here is one of many great moments we lived during the last 2 weeks, an encounter with a Kingfisher bird at the Mitis river.

This is a salmon river. We happen to be close to its end, right by the St-Lawrence. This portion is part of a small natural parc, the “Parc de la Mitis” .

We are on a pretty steep cliff.

While looking at the wonderful landscape, we hear a bird, unknown to us, followed by a “plouc” noise. And again, a little weird “chirp” and a “plouc”. I go down one level on the cliff and there it is: a belted kingfisher.

Reminder: by clicking on the picture you will see its larger version.

Here is a link to a sample of the sound emitted from the bird, check at the bottom of the page: Sound of a Belted Kingfisher

This one is a female, only them are displaying brown feathers below their throat.

I was in a shock at first, to see such a special bird.

Luckily, I have the right lens on the D90: the zoom Nikkor 70-300.

The bird preys just inches below the water and swiftly return to a rock, go back toward the water and disappears for good.

The whole sequence last 30 seconds.

And it was gone…

It started my day on a really good note!

Treatments and shooting characteristics :

D90
Exposure : 1/500
Aperture : f/11
Focal length : 300mm (450 in DX)
Aperture, Topaz Denoise 3, Viveza and Define from Nik software

François