Colourful Kingfisher caught before being ringed (don’t worry, he’s fine!)

Beak wide open and clearly in distress, this bird appears to have hopelessly trapped itself in garden netting.

In fact the tiny kingfisher in this extraordinary photograph was captured by experts recording bird numbers and movements.

They used a fine-mesh ‘mist net’ to trap 26 more specimens including goldfinches, wrens, robins, starlings, goldcrests and reed warblers.

The work was carried out by the British Trust for Ornithology on the Axe estuary in East Devon last week.

Mike Tyler, who led the exercise, said his team caught five kingfishers in three hours.

‘This is the highest number we have got in one go,’ he said. ‘Kingfishers travel so fast that people tend not to see them.

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Tagged as: Animals, Birds, British Trust for Ornithology, Devon, England, Goldcrests, Goldfinches, Kingfishers, Reed Warblers, Robins, Starlings, UK, Wrens