I can’t count how many times somebody in a brightly coloured fleece has stopped to ask loudly “have you seen any kingfishers?” before stomping off down the riverside, chatting with their friends and calling loudly to an oblivious dog. The chances are, ten minutes earlier, a flash of turquoise and burnt orange has shot under the rod or even perched on it! 

It doesn’t matter how often you see a kingfisher, it’s always a special moment and something to be savoured. As eye-searingly vivid as any hummingbird and just as here-and-gone, they’re a waterside treasure. Like most treasures in life, they come when you give them the chance, and there is little point in running after them. Stillness and quiet are the invisibility cloak you wear for nature to come to you.

Other natives of the waterways visit too. Dragonflies patrol the riverside vegetation on shimmering wings, hunting smaller insects. A black-tailed skimmer, powder-coated blue like an immature damson, lands on a rod to sunbathe between tours of his territory, returning at regular intervals through the afternoon. Demoiselles flutter, metallic bodies poised between wings banded with the darkest blue, displaying to their females and indulging in territorial spats with other males.

A hatch of mayflies dance in the air, either duns (pre-adult stage of mayfly) leaving the water to undergo their final moult or spinners (adults in their final life stage) returning to it to lay eggs and end their brief adult lives lying with wings and tails outstretched on the river surface, a free feast for the fish. Mayflies are the only group of insects with two separate flying stages, immature subimago duns and sexually mature imago spinners.

With 51 species of mayfly known in the UK, emerging at different times from April to September, it’s no wonder so many artificial fishing flies are tied to mimic them in their various life stages. Their exhausted bodies are an important food source for trout and young salmon, like the shy, striped parr I spotted in a gravelly reach of the River Severn last year, feeding up in the river for two or three years before turning into a silvery smolt and heading for the ocean. Maybe one day I’ll see him again, returned and transformed into a metre-long rod of pure silver, showing his crimson courting colours as he leaps from the water in front of me, forging his way upstream to his birthplace stream to breed.

Magic river moments, all of them, but I’d like to share another with you – possibly my best. I’m sitting below the steep bank by the water, bats just beginning to come out, finishing a cup of tea and reading a book about otters. My fisherman points across the river, and I spot a blunt head breaking the surface, v-shaped ripples following a whiskered nose. Yes – there it is, an otter, a big dog otter! An arching dive and he comes up with a little silver fish, carrying it to the bank. A few quick chomps and the fish is gone. The otter lopes up the bank almost opposite where we sit in awe-struck silence, bounds along for a few yards silhouetted against the last of the sunset, slides down again like a child tobogganing, and back into the water without a splash, where he continues leisurely downstream trailing his wake behind. We’re left in silence, watching a stretch of water somehow sanctified by his passage.

In silence we pack up and leave the fishing to the professionals.

Find out more about the river habitats and species in this blog by taking a look at our Discover Wildlife pages.