A lightning flash – the kingfisher

WHEN walking my dog alongside a local river in South West England in summer, I see a vivid dart flying low above the river and a few seconds later the dart flies upriver towards me.

I only get a blink of an eye sighting. A flash of iridescent blue, less than a metre above the river, this bird’s bright, exotic colourings warn potential predators that its flesh has a foul taste.

In the 14th century, this bird was called the ‘King’s fisher’ and, four centuries later, it was renamed ‘kingfisher’. Often in English literature, hot summer days of yesteryear are recorded as ‘the halcyon days’ when idyllic, calm and peaceful conditions prevailed.

The word ‘halcyon’ came from Greek mythology. Halcyone was the daughter of Aeolus. Upon her husband’s death in a shipwreck, she drowned herself and, in doing so, was transformed into a kingfisher. Halcyone allegedly kept the waters calm as she built her nest.

Common British kingfisher

This small bird, Alcedo atthis, builds its nest between April and August in a deep burrow, which it excavates in the side of a riverbank.

At the end of the tunnel, the female will lay six or seven round white eggs. When hatched, the fledglings are fed almost entirely on a diet of minnows and sticklebacks supplemented with water beetles, dragonflies and other insects.

This is the most colourful of British birds, with its bluish-green back and rust red underparts. It is graced with a pattern of red, white and blue on its cheeks. Its short legs and stubby tail are compensated by its firm head and long, dagger-like bill, which is used for grabbing fish, rather than, as one might think, for spearing them. It plunges headlong beneath the river’s surface to grab its prey. With binocular-like and good colour vision, its prey has no chance of escape.

Spy-post and digestion

The kingfisher perches on an overhanging tree branch above a quiet river pool before swooping down headfirst. This perch is usually its fishing point. Once seized, a fish is carried back to the branch and with very adept manipulations of its bill, the bird turns the fish around until the fish’s head faces outwards.

It then bangs the fish’s head against the branch until the fish is stunned or dead before reversing the fish to swallow it head first. In this way, the spines of sticklebacks and bullheads cannot be raised to stick in its gullet, nor can the scales of other fish. Suffice to say, a kingfisher’s nest is often filled with excreted bones.

The severe winter of 1963 saw the kingfisher population decimated by the freezing conditions. Most rivers in the UK were frozen over. However, with global warming, these birds have recovered but are now threatened by river pollution in some areas. I shall clamber amongst the invasive Japanese knotweed on the banks of my river to get a glimpse of this illustrious bird.

Black-capped kingfisher of Borneo

This particular species, Halcyon pileata, is found all over Southeast Asia, with a wider range of habitats than the British kingfisher, for it is not confined to riverine locations and can be seen in mangrove swamps and coastal locations.

I have seen this bird twice, once along the Kinabatangan River in East Sabah and more recently along a stretch of river in a kampung near Borneo Highlands.

The students with me could not believe its speed or its dazzling flash of colours as it darted back and forth along a meandering stretch of that river. Like all kingfishers, this bird was marking its territorial rights from intruders.

Dazzling colours

The black-capped kingfisher is no exception as all blue colourations on kingfishers’ backs are due to light refraction. About 28 centimetres long, its bluish-purple wings and back are distinct from its black head and shoulders and its white throat and collar, together with its reddish lower parts.

Truly a multi-coloured bird, it has a large bill and short legs, both reddish in colour, and perches on mangroves or overhanging branches in riverine areas. Again, with lightning speed, it suddenly dives down to catch fish or large insects.

Breeding

This kingfisher, too, builds a nest at the end of a horizontal tunnel that it has drilled with its beak into the earth of a riverbank. There, a cluster of four to five round, white eggs are laid, usually in June or July. These nests are usually located upstream to avoid flooding during the monsoon period with both parents taking turns to feed the fledglings.

Oriental dwarf kingfisher

For obvious reasons, this species, Ceyx erithaca, is often known as the ‘three- toed kingfisher’. It tends to dwell in lowland forests and usually along the course of a densely shaded stream. It is distinctive, not only for its small size, but more because of its very colourful markings. With a red long beak and red legs, and a reddish-blue head and bluish-black upper body, it is particularly noticeable by its yellow breast and white throat. A dash of white may also be seen across the back of its neck.

Again, like most species of riverine kingfisher, it burrows into the riverbank to lay its clutch of four to five eggs. This usually occurs at the start of the South West Monsoon season. These fledglings hatch within three weeks and are fed on geckos, crabs, snails, small frogs and dragonflies.

‘Sweet dreams are made of this …’

Owing to their lightning speed and low flying, kingfishers are seldom shot or trapped. This is one species of bird to which mankind offers little threat other than by river pollution and the loss of the birds’ habitats through so-called developments.

However, water rats may invade their tunnels to feast on eggs or fledglings. The main cause of death of these birds is the result of the ferocity with which they attack a riverbank with their bills to excavate a tunnel for their nests.

In my ‘neck of the woods’ in England, there are very many stones together with soil, which were both sludged downhill at the end of the last Ice Age.

These solifluction deposits constitute local riverbanks. In parts of Borneo, not dissimilar deposits may be found, but usually riverbanks are embedded with stones from former proto river deposits.

Whatever, the fleeting sight of a kingfisher with its iridescent colours, albeit for a fraction of a second, is a sight to behold and one that you will forever remember.

Whilst kingfishers are listed as an unthreatened bird species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red Lists, I have my doubts about this, for we really do not know much about these fast moving secret agents.