The Common Kingfisher

At a glance

• Length: about 16 cm
• Upperparts: blue-green to turquoise; underparts: orange
• Bill: long, straight, dagger-shaped, dark
• Legs and feet: orange-red
• IUCN Red List: Least Concern; global trend unknown
• Food: small fish, aquatic insects and larvae, small crustaceans, tadpoles
• Nest: a burrow up to about 1 m long, dug into a steep earth bank

Habitat

The bird fishes in clear, slow water. It watches from a low perch above the water and dives head-first after prey, so the water must be clear enough to see into. For nesting it needs steep, bare banks of sand or loam, without plants or stone reinforcement.

Threats named in the sources

• Water pollution, which removes prey fish
• River engineering and straightening
• Bank reinforcement, which removes nest banks

Telling it apart

Two other small blue kingfishers occur on Java. The Blue-eared Kingfisher (Alcedo meninting) has blue ear-coverts and darker, more metallic blue upperparts; it keeps to forest streams. The Cerulean Kingfisher (Alcedo coerulescens) is paler blue with white underparts, not orange. The larger Collared Kingfisher (Todiramphus chloris, cekakak sungai) is blue and white and lives in open areas and along coasts. The Javan Kingfisher (Halcyon cyanoventris, cekakak jawa) is a land hunter of open country and rice fields, not a river diver.