It’s nearly ten years since I last wrote about the kingfisher, so perhaps it’s time to do so again. Just occasionally I’ve been blessed with having a good view of this bird: kingfishers are small, shy, with short wings blurred in rapid flight. So mostly all I see is the briefest glimpse of a brightly jewelled arrow fleeting past. Each time I’ve really been able to watch one, rather than just glimpse it, has been special and stays in my memory - always from hides: at Llyn Coed y Dinas, by Welshpool, where the speeding jewel alighted on a post not far from the hide; Doxey Marshes by Stafford, where I was able to watch a bird perched just feet away for probably as long as ten minutes; Slimbridge in Gloucestershire, where we had taken a party of youngsters - a real red letter day for them; and Rye Meads in the Lea Valley, where there was an excellent view of a very active nest hole, and the parent birds coming and going.
Kingfishers are surprisingly small, so much so that the sturdy dagger-like bill can seem almost half as long as the bird itself (and indeed it is!). The upper parts are blue green, the cheeks and underside a dullish orange. Throat and the back of the cheek are white, with the forward cheek around the eye orange. The upper parts are iridescent, hence that sense of a mobile jewel when the bird flies by you! The bird has a shrill, piping call, which you are likely to hear before you see the bird itself.
Kingfishers are resident in the UK, and are found throughout England and Wales, though absent from part of Scotland, perhaps because they don’t cope well with hard winters. They feed on small fish and tadpoles, etc, spotted from a suitable perch before diving to catch it. If there isn’t a perch to hand the bird may hover before diving. This diet of fish helps give the bird itself an unpleasant taste, so kingfishers are rarely predated.
The nest hole is also rather manky and smelly, due to the accumulation of fish bones, droppings and the like. The birds (both parents work together) can excavate a tunnel as long as three feet into the bank. Five to seven eggs are laid, and both parents are involved with feeding. Kingfishers will always swallow a fish head first; often it will hold a newly caught fish by the tail and beat its head against a branch, before turning the fish round in order to swallow it. Of course, fish presented to the youngsters are also offered head first.
There are ninety or so species of kingfisher around the world: “Our” kingfisher is found widely across Europe and Asia, and into North Africa, and as far as Papua New Guinea. Most kingfisher species live in places warmer than here, but the belted kingfisher I’ve seen in Canada nests up into the Arctic, though flying south for the winter. The ten species of kingfisher found in Australia include the kookaburra, which I think is the largest species of kingfisher - a “tree kingfisher”, whose lifestyle has very little to do with water - it eats insects, small vertebrates, and the occasional snake!
No comments:
Post a Comment