Kingfisher: The Flying Fisherman

Its a hot summer's day and you are sitting on your haunches in the cool shade of the overhanging trees on the river bank, finger on the shutter-release button of your digital camera.

Suddenly, there is a streak of colours - brilliant iridescent turquoise, amber and a little white and then, a faint splash as the Kingfisher dives through the mirror-like surface of the water from his perch overhead.

You go trigger-happy, shooting ‘click, click, click…’ and barely manage to get a couple of shots as the little bird, with fish in beak gleaming silver in the sunshine, breaks out from under the surface into the air taking a steep flight path into the branches above.

You excitedly check the little LCD screen and discover that although the bird did a shallow dive of less than ten inches below the surface, your camera did not capture him underwater due to reflections off the placid surface of the water. If only you had a Polaroid filter over your zoom lens!

But then, how did the kingfisher, perched at a greater distance than you, see his prey under the surface? With polarizing filters over his eyes! Not only that - membranes automatically cover its eyes when it dives underwater. Hey, shutterbug, how’s that for shutter-priority?!

Back on its perch, holding the fish by the tail, it whacks it to the branch to kill it first before swallowing it head first, so that there is no chance of the fish’s fins piercing his gullet while swallowing it and choking to death.

This highly territorial bird defends its fishing grounds from rivals as if its life depended on it - because it does! The kingfisher needs to eat almost two-thirds of its body weight in fish, every day.

The Kingfisher courts the female by displaying his flying skills and finally catching a fish and presenting it to his queen.

The pair then take turns in stabbing at the earth with their bills to make a 3 feet upward-slopping tunnel in the river bank. A nest chamber is made at the end of the tunnel where the female lays about 5-8 little white eggs and starts incubation but is subsequently taken over by the male.

After about 21 days, the naked and blind hatchlings break free. The tubular sheaths holding the adult feathers break open much later. Till then, the little birds look more like prickly hedgehogs.

Kingfishers have a life span of about 20 years. Every year during the breeding season, a pair of them has been coming to nest in a hole in the inner wall of my well, just above the water level. They announce their arrival with their typically shrill calls. They get all the fish they need from the well itself. I guess this is their preferred destination over the highly polluted Daman Ganga River just a stone’s throw away!

Copyright © 2006 Noël Gama

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