Kingfishers or kingfishers?

A horrible day in the car. All the way to Kanchanaburi. Late in the afternoon we arrive in the Sayok Nature Reserve. It's just as cold here as in the North.

We sleep on a boat for four hundred and fifty Baht per person. This seems expensive, but it includes dinner and breakfast. Actually to our surprise, those two meals are excellent, so the price is not too bad. Before dinner we drink Mekong on the terrace of Adel and Jan, my youngest sister and her husband, on the water side.

I get up early. It's dead cold. After breakfast we take a short walk across the Kwai. The other side can be reached via a fearfully swinging suspension bridge. Of course I walk in my single shirt and only think about warm Pattaya. We take another boat trip and I tell my sister that I saw several kingfishers last time. At that exact moment I exclaim, “Look, there is one!” To our delight we then see several specimens in brilliant blue and red colours. That makes up for the cold. Beautiful as they sit on a branch and dive down like a rocket. They disappear under water and return a little later, usually with a fish in their mouth.

The photo is not my own production. They are too fast and too far. Strange name by the way, ice birds. This makes no sense. In English they are called kingfishers and that is name, which expresses exactly what they are. Conversely, I think a pineapple sounds much better than pineapple. They also taste like pineapple.