Next to an eagle’s call or a great blue heron’s grouchy squawking, it’s a kingfisher’s loud Morse-code-quick rattling that requires me to stop, listen and look.
It’s a bird that looks pieced together from leftover avian designs: a top-heavy chunky body, large head with a shaggy feathered crest, an aggressive-looking bill longer than its head, short neck and tail, short legs and weak feet, irregular wing beat, and a rusty belt below the blue-gray band across the female’s chest that makes her more colorful than the male.
The purpose of the rufous belt has been debated for decades. Does it reduce aggression between a male and female, speeding up the pairing?
Does it indicate anything about the female that might catch the attention of the male? But wouldn’t a call be enough? Research in the 1970s showed that a female kingfisher with her eggs in a deep burrow could tell the difference between her mate and a stranger.
During breeding season, kingfishers defend their territory, a half-mile or so stretch along a river or other body of water.
When they’re not defending, both sexes work together (males spend about twice the digging time as the female) to excavate a 3- to 7-foot upward-sloping burrow (keeps out rain) into a preferably sandy-clay bank along a stream, river or marine location, although a nearby sand and gravel pit occasionally may be used.
Typically it takes several days but can take longer to build a chamber about 6 inches wide. That much earthmoving is facilitated by two toes on each foot that are partially fused together, a bonus for digging but a major liability for walking. And kingifshers probably come in under budget and on time, unlike Big Bertha.
Some burrows require more effort than others. In the Wilson Journal of Ornithology, researchers reported aerial ramming by a pair of kingfishers near Missoula, Montana.
From a perch or while hovering 1 to 3 meters above a bank, they flew rapidly, bill-first, 176 times during morning observations. They managed to create a body-deep pit after a combined 60 hours work. On the fourth day they shuffled (remember the fused toes) in and out to remove more dirt but then abandoned the site.
The researchers said that their observations may have been the first time aerial ramming had been reported.
Other facts about kingfishers:
— They look for fish from a perch, flying low over the water or hovering over it for several seconds, then diving with closed eyes.
— With the prey in the bill, the kingfisher flies to a perch and pounds the catch into a branch before swallowing it head first.
— The chicks digest the bones and scales with gastric juices, but as they age, they start disgorging pellets of skeletons and shells.
— Pleistocene fossils of belted kingfishers up to 600,000 years old have been found in four southern states.
— A relative of the belted kingfisher is the rare moustached kingfisher, which until last year had not been seen for decades. Then a researcher from the American Museum of Natural History captured a bright blue male in a mist net in a Guadalcanal jungle.
— After photographing and filming it, and after concluding that the population was healthy, researchers euthanized the bird, prepared it as a scientific specimen, and took it back to the museum. Turning the kingfisher into a museum specimen drew a high volume of negative comments, but it was not taken as a trophy and will be studied.
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468- 3964.
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