Many species of kingfisher are noted for the amazing brilliance of their plumage, with males often a bit more colorful than females; gleaming greens and blues result from feather structure, while reds and yellows are made by pigments. However, our belted kingfisher is not so flashy in color and it is the female that bears the reddish band across the breast.
not all of them feed on fish. In fact, many of them are not much associated with water at all. The numerous forest species commonly capture large insects, but they also take amphibians and worms. The species that do a lot of fishing capture not only fish but also invertebrates and sometimes amphibians or other small vertebrates.
All of them are cavity-nesters, mostly in earthen banks country wise email marketing list but a few nest in termite mounds or tree holes. Burrows in earthen banks can be several feet long; the giant kingfisher of Africa can build tunnels as long as 20 feet or more. Both sexes share the chores of digging the burrow. The two outer toes are fused together (to various degrees in different species), which might make a better shovel for digging, but some researchers suggest other possible functions, including a better grip on a perch from which the hunting birds search for prey.
One kind of kingfisher inspired a children’s nonsense song: “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree; merry, merry king of the bush is he!”— entertaining itself by eating gumdrops, counting monkeys, and so on. Kookaburras live in Australia and New Guinea. The one that led to the song is the laughing kookaburra of eastern Australia, known for its call. It is about as big as a giant kingfisher, but there are four other, smaller kookaburra species. They all forage in wooded habitats, capturing small vertebrates and large invertebrates. One of them has a very specialized foraging method; it uses its hefty lower bill as a shovel, pushing it like a plow through the litter and soil, picking up worms and snails and other edibles.