Appearance: Blue-gray back and wings, white belly with a broad gray breastband, females have an additional rust colored breastband. Head has a distinctive crest with a long, straight bill. Feet have the front two toes partially joined. Wings and tail have white bars, white throat.

Size: 13 inches (larger than a robin).

Range: Alaska, Canada down to southern US, winters south to Panama.

Habitat: prefers streams, lakes, bays, coasts.

Food preferences: eats almost exclusively fish, although they can also eat aquatic invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, insects, young birds, mice, and rarely berries. Young are fed a regurgitant.

Hunting Technique: dives from a perch, or hovers and dives into the water from above.

Breeding: Mates recognize each other by distinctive calls given calls given when approaching the nest. Breeding usually occurs along watercourses. Both sexes are solitary when not in breeding/nesting season.

Nesting: a horizontal or upward-sloping burrow in a bank of a waterway, usually 3 to 6 feet in length but some have reached up to 15 feet. Rarely nests in a tree cavity. Male and female alternately dig and remove detritus from cavity. Lined with grass or a saucer of leaves.

Eggs: 1 brood per year, usually 6 - 7 eggs are laid. Both sexes incubate.

Chicks: The young hatch 23 - 24 days after the egg is laid, and are hatched blind and naked. Young huddle together for warmth, and are able to maintain their body heat as a group at 6 days. About 23 days after hatching, the chicks are fledged, and the parents begin teaching hunting skills. By 10 days after fledging the young are able to retrieve small fish out of the water and are driven out of the parent's territory.

Status: This species is listed as one of the top 20 priority avian species of concern identified by West Va. Partners in Flight. It occurs in West Virginia all year long and is fairly common. They are listed as a species of concern because they are such a great indicator of potential stress factors in riverine ecosystems. Many West Virginians note a decline in kingfishers in recent years around the State.

Notes: As many may have guessed, the term "kingfisher" means "king of the fishers." It is more interesting to look into the meaning of the scientific words for the belted kingfisher. "Mega" translates to "big" and "ceryle" comes from the Greek word for "seabird". The second name, "alcyon", comes from Greek also and goes back centuries into Greek mythology. According to myth, a lady named Alcyon grieved so much for her drowned husband that the gods took pity and turned them both into kingfishers.

Kingfishers are found the world over and have very quick digestive systems, actually digesting the fish they have swallowed as it inches down their throats. They eject pellets (in a similar manner to raptors) and much data suggests that they are monogamous. Their solitary nature when not in breeding season leads to them actually driving off any other kingfishers during the rest of the year. A note attached to one published description states that the size of the individual bird is inversely proportional to the food abundance in their hunting area.

From what we have seen at the Center these birds face more and more impact from free-roaming dogs. From the histories we have been able to gather, the belted kingfishers that were turned in for care had all been captured by roaming dogs and brought back to their masters as a trophy. The great sadness is that due to the injuries the dogs gave the birds in either the capture or transport, and despite even often desperate measures taken by the dog owners, we were unable to save any belted kingfishers this year.