Nature: Rare glimpse at kingfishers offers insight into species

NATURE
Jim McCormac

Living the fishy life is probably a tranquil existence. Quiet waters buffer the scaly crowd from the noisy hubbub of the terrestrial world. Softly filtered golden light illuminates the bubbly aquatic realm of fishes, which glide about in semi-weightless bliss.

Until POW! The water explodes as if a grenade went off, and a big mass of blue and white feathers plunges into the depths. Before a hapless piscine prey can react, a stiletto-like bill snaps into it like an ornithological mousetrap.

The unlucky victim is promptly airlifted from the water and flown to a nearby branch. There it is mercilessly pounded against the wood until thoroughly stunned and then gulped down whole by the monster that snared it.

Meet the belted kingfisher. These aquatic fish-eaters are fixtures along most of our local waterways, ponds, and lakes. Chunky and block-headed, the kingfisher is steely-blue above and white below. A blue band stretches like a strap across its chest. Females possess an additional rufous breast band – a rare case of a female bird being more colorful than the male.

Interlopers usually hear a kingfisher before seeing it. Highly territorial and utterly intolerant of turf invasions, the bird will loudly rattle at all comers, people included. This holds true with members of their own species, even the opposite sex, for most of the year.

Kingfishers are virulently antisocial and pairs form for only as long as it takes to produce a crop of youngsters. During the brief courtship, the normally unsocial male becomes a sweetheart, wooing his mate with fish offerings.

I was fortunate to glimpse briefly into the life of nesting kingfishers last June. Laura and David Hughes had found an active nest along a stream in southeast Ohio, and I was able to spend time observing and photographing it.

In keeping with the overall weirdness of kingfishers, the nest is anything but typical. The pair excavates a burrow high in an earthen bank along a stream. The nest’s entrance shaft extends back about three feet, sloping slightly upward. An enlarged nesting chamber terminates the tunnel.

By the time of my arrival, the five chicks were nearly adult-sized and already had plumage similar to their parents. An adult would occasionally appear with a fish, crayfish or some other aquatic treat which would be seized by a youngster and dragged into the burrow’s depths. In between feedings, the youngsters created a noisy barrage of rattles. Sometimes a chick would sit at the burrow’s entrance, calling incessantly like a machine gun with a stuck trigger.

As waste products produced by fish-heavy diets produces foul guano, we wondered how the birds dealt with the excreta in the tight confines of their burrow. It turns out that the chicks blast jets of the malodorous effluvia against the walls of the nest chamber. They then scratch up dirt and hurl it over the waste, covering it. And in the process enlarge the chamber to better facilitate their growth.

Two days after my visit, Laura observed the young kingfishers make their inaugural flight from the nest. She and Dave saw them on occasion afterward, gaining firsthand experience in the fine art of aerial plunge-dive fishing, kingfisher style.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.