Country Diary: Newcastle upon Tyne

It would be hard to imagine a less likely place to find a kingfisher, but I caught a brief glimpse of one here yesterday, so we came back today to look for it again. The Ouseburn runs for nine miles under Newcastle, through leafy Jesmond Dene and then via underground culverts until it surfaces under Byker Bridge and drains into the Tyne. It flows for the last half mile through a valley that must have been, in its day, industrial hell on earth. An iron foundry, glass furnaces, flour and flax mills, lead works, a lime kiln and close-packed dwellings all drained effluent into its narrow tidal flow. The industries are long gone, their surviving buildings converted into an artists' cooperative, potters' studios, galleries and Seven Stories, the Center for Children's Books, clustered around an environmental education center. This crucible of the industrial revolution has become a hotbed of creativity.

The slipway, where Tyne keels once loaded coal and which now services a small fleet of brightly painted pleasure boats, was the place where the kingfisher appeared yesterday, on a mooring rope, peering into the trickling flow on the riverbed at low tide. And here it was again today, this time on a coil of rusty wire on the edge of a pool, an immaculate electric blue-and-orange apparition against a background of grey river mud. In a splash and a flash it plunged in, then streaked across to the river to perch on the lower rungs of one of the quayside ladders. We watched from a distance as it whacked the silver fish against the iron step to subdue it, gulped it down, puffed up its orange chest feathers and settled down for a preening session. The community-led regeneration of the Lower Ouseburn Valley, turning former industrial dereliction into a focus for cultural activity and environmental awareness, has this kingfisher's seal of approval.