Belted Kingfisher

With the entire North American continent to call home, you might think a Belted Kingfisher would be a little easier to find.

Not so.

If every birder has a nemesis bird in their life, this would be mine.

I could call it bad luck, bad timing or bad karma...it's all the same in the end...a beautiful bird that flies away.

The time spent chasing a Belted Kingfisher is never wasted, though, because kingfishers live in beautiful places...always near water.  They live on fish, as their name implies, and other aquatic life.

Surprisingly or at least noteworthy, the female Belted Kingfisher is more colorful than the male. She sports an additional rufous band under her wings and across her breast that the male does not.

The male, to be sure, is no ugly partner in this relationship though.

He's stud-muffin beautiful perched across the river.

Oddly beautiful might be the apt description to place on these birds.

Almost prehistoric in appearance they make you thankful Belted Kingfishers are not seven feet tall and weigh a hundred pounds.

Allan

Credit: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds