Friday 26 September 2014

BBC News - Urban kingfishers making a home on London's waterways

More on this Story...: "Tomos Brangwyn has been photographing wildlife since he was a child growing up in south London and in recent years has turned his attention to taking pictures of kingfishers living in London's network of concrete water channels.

Here Brangwyn offers an insight into the project which is also part of a film for the BBC's The One Show.

As a young boy growing up in London, kingfishers were the blue, exotic jewels that I saw flash by whilst exploring my local river, the Wandle. It was hardly believable that such a strikingly charismatic bird could be living so close to my home in south London. I soon began cycling to the river after school, trying to get photos of them fishing, with my dad's old film camera.

My first attempts were largely unsuccessful as I never had the big lenses needed to get frame-filling shots and my bicycle would always be vandalised while waiting for the kingfishers to arrive. It wasn't until some 15 years later that I finally mustered up the courage and patience to get the pictures I had always dreamt of."

Kingfisher feeding it's young