Mystery of visiting kingfisher

The other day, I had an extraordinary encounter with a bird. I opened the front door early in the morning to go out and feed the hens and, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something bright blue in the shade of a potted plant on the doorstep. 

I reached down to pick it up, thinking at first that it was a piece of litter that had blown in, and discovered that it was a kingfisher. It was sitting on the step, apparently asleep, with its eyes closed and its long beak resting on its breast.

Kingfishers don’t normally sleep on people’s doorsteps and, although I’ve sometimes seen them hunting small fish and tadpoles along field drains, I live several kilometres from any regular kingfisher habitat so I was very surprised.