As a child I spent hours watching it at a small pond called “Moiasso”. The kingfisher was one of the first animals that made me fall in love with nature, and even today a flash of blue above the water is enough to stop me in my tracks.
Many people picture it as an exotic bird, but it is a native species: it can even live along a country canal or a ditch not far from houses. The hard part is not so much finding it as noticing it before it flies off.
How to recognise the common kingfisher
The common kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) is smaller than you might expect: about 16-17 cm long and weighing around 40 grams. It has a large head, a long, sturdy bill, tiny legs and a short tail, a compact shape that is hard to mistake.
The back and wings are blue and turquoise, the breast and belly orange. That vivid blue does not come from a pigment but from the way the structure of the feathers reflects light, which is why the same bird can look bright blue or almost green depending on the light.
You will often hear it before you see it: in flight it gives a sharp, dry whistle, then passes low and straight over the water.
Male or female?
The sexes are almost identical and the difference lies in the bill. The male has an entirely black bill, at most with a small orange patch at the base. The female has a largely orange lower bill, as if she had put on a little lipstick.
Where it lives and where to watch it
It looks for water rich in small fish and banks with vegetation: slow-flowing streams, rivers, canals, ditches, small lakes and old flooded quarries. Above all it needs two things: perches over the water to hunt from and banks suitable for digging its nest.
In Italy it can be seen all year round, though not always in the same places: when the cold freezes inland waters it has to move to milder areas. Unlike the bee-eater, a distant relative that comes from Africa only to breed, it mostly does not make long migrations.
My advice is to choose a quiet stretch of water, sit down at a distance and watch the low branches along the bank. A motionless orange dot, a metre or two above the water, could well be a kingfisher.
How it hunts
Watching it fish is a spectacle that lasts only moments. It sits still on its perch, moves its head to judge the distance to its prey and plunges down: the dive takes less than a second and usually goes no deeper than 25 cm. Underwater its eyes are protected by a membrane, and its plumage traps so much air that it comes back up almost dry.
Back on the branch, it beats the fish against the wood and swallows it head first, so that fins and scales cause it no trouble. It eats mainly small fish, but also aquatic insects, crustaceans and small amphibians. It can eat about half its own weight each day, and several times a day it regurgitates the parts it cannot digest as small pellets.
The nest: a tunnel dug into the bank
The kingfisher does not build a nest among the branches. Male and female dig a tunnel in a vertical bank of sand or clay, usually between 60 and 90 cm long. The tunnel slopes slightly upwards to keep the water out and ends in a small chamber where 6-7 eggs are usually laid.
Incubation lasts about three weeks, then the chicks stay in the tunnel for almost another month. Over a season that can run from spring to early autumn, a pair may raise as many as 2 or 3 broods. That sounds like a lot of chicks, but only some survive after fledging.
Why it needs protecting
Worldwide it is not considered threatened, but in Europe it is protected under Annex I of the Birds Directive. Its problems are those of our waterways: pollution, concreted banks and vegetation cut back along the shores. A summer flood can swamp the tunnel with all the chicks inside, and a very harsh winter can significantly reduce local populations.
That is why seeing one is also good news: where there are kingfishers, there are usually still fish and banks with some life in them.
Photographing it without disturbing it
You have to be more of a naturalist than a photographer, and with this bird that is even more true. It takes patience and keeping your distance, and you should never approach the tunnel during nesting: no photo is worth the risk of a brood being abandoned. If the animal changes its behaviour because of us, we are already too close.
If you enjoy birds, you will find more encounters in mybird gallery. And next time you walk past a ditch, take a good look at the low branches: that flash of blue may be closer than you think!
