Ever since I was a small boy, I’ve been a birder. Not perhaps as enthusiastic as many, but it’s a hobby I’ve enjoyed for almost seven decades. I’ll be 76 in November.

I guess my ‘golden years’ were those I spent between 1976 and 1980 in Costa Rica in Central America, where the bird life was out of this world. The years I spent in the Philippines between 1991 and 2010 were disappointing from a birding point of view. I’d been spoilt by Costa Rica. But if I had taken the effort, like my close friend and colleague Graham McLaren did, there were plenty of exotic species to find in the fields and forests close to our home in Los Baños, south of Manila.

Since I retired in 2010, and especially since we moved to the northeast of England four years ago, I’ve taken to birding once again, and enjoy walking the waggonways that criss-cross North Tyneside, and where the bird life is quite exceptional.

But yesterday, I fulfilled a birding dream that has taken me all my life to achieve.

With the weather set reasonably fair, Steph and I decided to head north to the Hauxley Wildlife Discovery Centre and Nature Reserve (just south of Amble), one of the best bird-watching sites on the Northumberland coast, next to the beach at the north end of Druridge Bay. It’s somewhere we have visited several times since moving north, and a walk around the lake never disappoints. There are several hides from which to quietly observe all the birds around the site.

I guess we left home around 10:15, and arrived to the Centre just before 11:00. First stop: the café for a welcome Americano (and a ‘comfort stop’, of course).

We’d just sat down to enjoy our coffees when a lady at the next table beside the window suddenly stood up, binoculars to her eyes, and exclaimed ‘blue!’.

Male kingfisher (source: RSPB).

Did I hear correctly? It could only mean one bird that I have waited all my life to see: the iconic common kingfisher (Alcedo atthis). Grabbing my binoculars, I scanned the vegetation on the other side of the lake, and finally had a male  kingfisher in view.

It’s an elusive, shy bird. Many people only ever see a flash of metallic blue-green feathers along a watercourse. But we were in luck.

Over the next 20 minutes or so we had magnificent views of this beautiful bird. This boy was fishing, choosing between two perches some 10 meters apart and just above the water. So we were able to see him diving and returning to his perch to enjoy his catch.

And those iridescent wing and dorsal feathers which we saw in their full glory as he emerged from the water, desperately flapping his wings to gain height and return to his perch, just like in this video (from YouTube).

What a start to the day, and probably one of the best for birds we’ve enjoyed at Hauxley, observing almost 30 species including a pair of Egyptian geese and a dozen herons.

I’ve seen a number of different kingfisher species in Costa Rica, in the Philippines, and Australia. But there’s no doubt about it. That sighting of a lone common kingfisher yesterday was a brilliant moment that’s now etched in my memory.