Length -- 12 to 13 inches. About one-fourth as large again as the
robin.
Male -- Upper part grayish blue, with prominent crest on head
reaching to the nape. A white spot in front of the eye. Bill
longer than the head, which is large and heavy. Wings and the
short tail minutely speckled and marked with broken bands of
white. Chin, band around throat, and underneath white. Two
bluish bands across the breast and a bluish wash on sides.
Female -- Female and immature specimens have rufous bands where
The adult male's are blue. Plumage of both birds oily.
Range -- North America, except where the Texan kingfisher
replaces it in a limited area in the Southwest. Common from
Labrador to Florida, east and west. Winters chiefly from
Virginia southward to South America.
Migrations -- March. December. Common summer resident. Usually a
winter resident also.
If the kingfisher is not so neighborly as we could wish, or as he used to be,
it is not because he has grown less friendly, but because the streams near our
homes are fished out. Fish he must and will have, and to get them nowadays it
is too often necessary to follow the stream back through secluded woods to the
quiet waters of its source: a clear, cool pond or lake whose scaly inmates
have not yet learned wisdom at the point of the sportsman's fly.
In such quiet haunts the kingfisher is easily the most conspicuous object in
sight, where he perches on some dead or projecting branch over the water,
intently watching for a dinner that is all unsuspectingly swimming below.
Suddenly the bird drops -- dives; there is a splash, a struggle, and then the
"lone fisherman" returns triumphant to his perch, holding a shining fish in
his beak. If the fish is small it is swallowed at once, but if it is large and
bony it must first be killed against the branch. A few sharp knocks, and the
struggles of the fish are over, but the kingfisher's have only begun. How he
gags and writhes, swallows his dinner, and then, regretting his haste, brings
it up again to try another wider avenue down his throat I The many abortive
efforts he makes to land his dinner safely below in his stomach, his grim
contortions as the fishbones scratch his throat-lining on their way down and
up again, force a smile in spite of the bird's evident distress. It is small
wonder he supplements his fish diet with various kinds of the larger insects,
shrimps, and fresh-water mollusks.
Flying well over the tree-tops or along the waterways. the kingfisher makes
the woodland echo with his noisy rattle, that breaks the stillness like a
watchman's at midnight. It is, perhaps, the most familiar sound heard along
the banks of the inland rivers. No love or cradle song does he know. Instead
of softening and growing sweet, as the voices of most birds do in the nesting
season, the endearments uttered by a pair of mated kingfishers are the most
strident, rattly shrieks ever heard by lovers it sounds as if they were
perpetually quarrelling, yet they are really particularly devoted.
The nest of these birds, like the bank swallow's, is excavated in the face of
a high bank, preferably one that rises from a stream; and at about six feet
from the entrance of the tunnel six or eight clear, shining white eggs are
placed on a curious nest. All the fish bones and scales that, being
indigestible, are disgorged in pellets by the parents, are carefully carried
to the end of the tunnel to form a prickly cradle for the unhappy fledglings.
Very rarely a nest is made in the hollow trunk of a tree; but wherever the
home is, the kingfishers become strongly attached to it, returning again and
again to the spot that has cost them so much labor to excavate. Some observers
have accused them of appropriating the holes of the water-rats.
In ancient times of myths and fables, kingfishers or halcyons were said to
build a floating nest on the sea, and to possess some mysterious power that
calmed the troubled waves while the eggs were hatching and the young birds
were being reared, hence the term "halcyon days," meaning days of fair
weather.