White-breasted Kingfisher or the White-throated Kingfisher.
Also, the Common or Eurasian Kingfisher is 17 cm in length and weighs around 30- 34 g. The underparts are bright orange in colour with the white bib. The wings are bluish green and the tail is bright blue in colour. They have blue head with the white mark on either side of it. They have short legs which are colored in orange. The wings and tails are short while the bill is long and pointed. Common Kingfisher prefers to live near streams, ponds and lakes. Common kingfisher feeds on aquatic insects, small fish and prawns. They mostly hunt during the morning or evening hours. Common Kingfisher usually mate during the spring season. The lifespan is of 7 years.
Common Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) gobbles up a mahseer minnow (small fish) on the Ramganga river in Corbett National Park in the Sivalik range of Uttarakhand state, India.
The Common Kingfisher or Alcedo Atthis is also known as Eurasian Kingfisher or River Kingfisher. Its small with seven subspecies distributed across Eurasia and North Africa. It is usually found in this range only but it migrates in winter when the river water freezes.
They have a distinctive kingfisher shape — short tail, dumpy body and large head. They have bright red legs and feet and wingspan of 25cms (9.8 in). The average weight of a common kingfisher is between 34 to 46 grams and height is around 16cms (6.3in). The juvenile is similar to the adult, but with duller and greener upperparts and paler underparts. Its bill is black, and the legs are also initially black. Both male and female are similar to look at except for one difference that the female has an orange-red lower mandible with a black tip.
The kingfisher has a fast but usually low over water flight. They rapidly whirr their short rounded wings, and show an electric-blue “flash” down at their back while flying away. The Common kingfisher does noty have a song. Its flight call is a short sharp whistle “chee” repeated two or three times. Restless birds emit a harsh, shrit-it-it and nestlings call for food with a churring noise. Common Kingfishers are important members of ecosystems and good indicators of freshwater community health.
The Common Kingfishers is highly territorial like other Kingfishers and must eat around 60% of its body weight each day. The courtship is initiated by the male chasing the female while calling continually, and later by ritual feeding, copulation usually following. The nest is in a burrow excavated by both birds of the pair in a low vertical riverbank, or sometimes a quarry or other cutting.
According to Wikipedia:
“The Common Kingfisher, Alcedo atthis, also known as Eurasian Kingfisher or River Kingfisher, is a small kingfisher with seven subspecies recognized within its wide distribution across Eurasia and North Africa. It is resident in much of its range, but migrates from areas where rivers freeze in winter.
This sparrow-sized bird has the typical short-tailed, large-headed kingfisher profile; it has blue upperparts, orange underparts and a long bill. It feeds mainly on fish, caught by diving, and has special visual adaptions to enable it to see prey under water. The glossy white eggs are laid in a nest at the end of a burrow in a riverbank.
This species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae in 1758 as Gracula atthis. The binomial name derives from the Latin alcedo, “kingfisher” (from Greek ἀλκυών, halcyon) and Atthis, a beautiful young woman of Lesbos, and favourite of Sappho.
The genus Alcedo comprises a number of small, exclusively fish-eating kingfishers. The Common Kingfisher’s closest relatives in the genus are three similar blue-backed, orange-breasted species, the Blue-eared, Half-collared and Blyth’s Kingfishers.”
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