Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE ROLLER-LIKE BIRDS

THE ROLLERS AND THEIR ALLIES

THE KINGFISHERS

Typical Kingfishers

The two hundred species of Kingfishers are disposed among twenty genera and are capable of being separated into two well-marked subfamilies.

The first of these (Alcedinina) comprises the so-called typical or true Kingfishers, in which there is a long, slender, compressed, and perceptibly keeled bill, combined with mainly fish-eating habits. Of the five genera comprised in this subfamily we may appropriately begin with Ceryle, which embraces all of the New World forms, and of these the best-known is of course the Belted Kingfisher (C. alcyon), which ranges over the whole of North America and south to Panama and the West Indies.

It is too well known to need extensive description, yet briefly it may be mentioned that it is a stocky bird about thirteen inches in length, bluish gray above, with conspicuous white spots on tail and wings, and pure white below, interrupted by a broad band of bluish lead-color across the breast, while the white of the throat passes as a narrow band around the hind neck.

The female is similar, but has the sides and a band across the belly rufous. This is the common Kingfisher whose rattling call is so frequently heard along our streams, ponds, and lakes, a bird alert, active, and seemingly”glad to be living.”In disposition it must be classed as a rather unsociable and quarrelsome bird, and except at the nesting season it is rather rare to find two together.

”Every bird,”says Major Bendire,”seems to have favorite perches along its range, each perhaps quite a distance away from the next, to which it flies from time to time, generally uttering its well-known shrill rattle in doing so. It is a watchful, rather shy bird, sitting frequently for an hour at a time in the same position, occasionally moving its head backward and forward, watching for its prey as a cat does for a mouse. In such a position the Kingfisher is one of the most charming features of brook and pool. Should an unfortunate fish come within sight at such times, our lone fisherman is at once alert enough, craning its neck and looking into the water, until the proper moment arrives to plunge downward, head first, disappearing out of sight, and usually emerging with a wriggling captive firmly grasped in its bill."

The nesting burrow is usually excavated by the birds themselves, preferably in a bank along a stream or other body of water, but occasionally along a dry watercourse or railroad cut.

The burrow varies in depth from four to fifteen feet, the nesting chamber being some eight or ten inches in diameter and on a higher level than the entrance. The eggs, usually five to six but sometimes as many as ten, are placed on the bare ground, on a slight covering of grass, or if the nest is an old one, upon fish bones and scales, the remnants of former captures.”The young when first hatched are blind, perfectly naked, helpless, and, in a word, very unprepossessing. They scarcely look like birds while crawling about in the nest, where they remain several weeks, their growth being very slow."

 

 

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