On the Fly – A Creek Bird

Here is a hardworking bird that, like many Martezians, knows want it wants and how to get it: the belted kingfisher, Megaceryle alcyon. Worldwide, there are about ninety species of kingfishers, but there are only a handful in North America, and this is the only one that lives throughout the United States. So you would think belted kingfishers would be a common sight, but they’re not. For one thing, they need to live by clear water, and for another, they are too territorial to hang out in groups, so instead they spread themselves thin along the waterways. Where waters freeze, kingfishers must migrate south but many of the kingfishers we see here are year-round residents. Migration starts right about now.

If you spend some time, unobtrusively, at one of the quiet spots along Alhambra Creek, amid the buzzing of insects and the twittering of other birds you might hear the distinctive rattle of a kingfisher. In the right light you might see the blue of its back and wings as it hovers, or more likely just plunges headlong from its perch, a bare branch overhanging the creek. Soon after a loud splash, the bird will emerge with a fish or some other small creature in its bill, shake it around a bit to make sure it’s dead, and swallow it. Kingfishers will reportedly go to great lengths to swallow their catches—to quote Dawson’s Birds of California (1923), “If the fish is a large one its captor often finds it necessary to go through the most ridiculous contortions, gaspings, writhings, chokings, regurgitations, and renewed attempts, in order to encompass its safe delivery within.”

Though they are blue, crested, and raucous, it’s hard to mistake kingfishers for Steller’s jays, the only other birds around here that look anything like them. The kingfisher is stocky and short-legged with a long bill and a short tail, and its crest is more Guy Fieri (unbleached) than James Dean. Males and females look alike, except that the female has a reddish-brown band across her chest, as do the juveniles. Their bellies are white, and when they fly you can see the white under their wings. Their call, the aforementioned rattle, seems to erupt involuntarily and sounds like playing cards in bicycle spokes, or a flapping reel of broken film. You can hear it online at Cornell’s All About Birds website, and also on Wikipedia.

Kingfisher courtship is energetic if straightforward. The male chases the female through the air, both of them rattling away, and if she thinks he’s a likely prospect, a courtship feeding will ensue in which she will sit with her beak in the air and wings drooping, calling for food. The male will give her a fish, and they will mate. For life.

Nesting reveals the down-to-earth nature of this bird—literally. To build their nest, the birds will dig into the streambank for about a week, going in six feet or so and forming a tunnel several inches in diameter and enlarged at the end to hold their offspring. The youngsters will be born helpless, but soon their dedicated parents will begin to teach them to feed themselves, helping them along in this perilous task by dropping dead fish into the water for them to retrieve.

Besides the photos that nature photographer Ethan Winning shot right here in Martinez and has kindly allowed me to include, you can find kingfishers on the Worth a Dam website. There’s no doubt they are enjoying the improved habitat engineered by our famous beavers. They (and we) are blessed to have above-ground, concrete-free portions of Alhambra Creek running through town, with clear water they can fish in and dirt banks where they can build their nests.