RIGHT HERE in ST LOUIS!

Alongside our drive and garden, we are lucky enough to have a two-acre field that is part of our property. Just three years ago, we sank in this field a big, fat pond, twelve feet deep and some twenty feet long. We let the water mature for a year before transferring to it the fish that lived in the wildly overplanted and rather tired shallow pond that we had inherited much nearer the house. The fish loved their new home and have thrived. They’ve had lots of babies.

We installed an elaborate arrangement of bamboo canes to frustrate and bamboozle Ron, the heron who is a pretty frequent visitor. He has never succeeded in taking any of the named fish that enjoy the freedom of the pond, named because recognizable. There are many anonymous residents, probably a majority of them (in the nature of things) sports, and it is impossible to begrudge so majestic a hunter any haul from among those that he may make.

But I would be distressed if he managed to harpoon Big Bill Broonzy, the splendid carp with the bright blue patch on his head, who came to us from a pond that he had outgrown in Crouch End; or Chubby Checker, another large carp with a hatchwork marking pattern, a refugee from my partner’s sister’s pond in Bristol; or Orpheus, the always chirpy blue orfe who is the sole survivor of seven orfe who were resident in the old pond when we came here ten years ago.

And I wouldn’t want to lose Jane the white goldfish, whose life I once saved when she trapped herself by swallowing an anchored grass root at the pond’s edge and who is named for a Los Angelino whom we first met this year and now consider a friend; or Andi, the largest of our ghost koi, who is named for the old friend from Telaviv who made the introduction to Jane – Andi swears she doesn’t mind lending her name to the greediest of our pond dwellers.

Yesterday, Ron was there, the first time I’d seen him in some weeks. But also visiting was a wonderful creature, one whom David (who is an early riser, unlike me) had seen once or twice but whom I had yet to clap eyes on: a kingfisher. My heart leapt. We’ve seen hummingbirds feeding in the Caribbean, lionfish shoaling in the Red Sea and all manner of exotic birds and fish on either side of the Indian Ocean. But nothing beats a kingfisher.

Its iridescence – blue and green on the back and wings, orange on the chest – was dazzling, caught in sinking sunlight as he shot the length of the pond, then back again and then veered away to the hedgerow beyond. Unexpectedly, he flew back to the pond, as if not convinced that I was really a threat, as if there might still be a chance to snatch a comet that had caught his eye. Then he gave up, zipped back towards the hedge and then up and over the hawthorn branches. Ron was long gone by this time, big birds being much more cowardly than little ones.

I hugged myself over my luck. We are blessed every day with the birds who grace our feeders with their visits – every sort of finch and tit, dunnocks and treecreepers, wagtails and warblers, both spotted and green woodpeckers. Wrens and robins nest widely in our gardens. We see owls and all manner of falcons and hawks in and over our field and we are overflown twice daily by a honking flock of Canada geese. All this is of course not to count the less welcome birds, the pigeons and crows and, worst of all, the magpies that, I believe, are most responsible for the decline of sparrows and thrushes.

Today, both Ron and the kingfisher – shall I call him Gregor? – were there again. Ron indeed had brought Ronette, his better half, and, perhaps because of that, made himself scarce even more swiftly. The sighting of Gregor was also briefer but now that we are on his regular circuit we shall perhaps see more of him. I hope so. The odd lost goldfish/carp cross is a small price to pay for playing host to one of nature’s great glories.