by Frank Keim
If you’ve ever lived or travelled on a river almost anywhere in Alaska, you’ve seen or heard the Belted kingfisher. They’re fast, though, so to get a good look at them you’ve got to be quick. But they’re also loud, and you can’t confuse their telltale rattle-call for that of any other bird. Get out your binocs and you’ll find they match their nickname, “the King.”
The first thing you notice about kingfishers is their bushy crest and stout bill. With such a large sharp bill they might even be mistaken for woodpeckers. You know they’re kingfishers, though, when they dive headlong into a lake or river and come up with a fish in their mouth.
The second thing you notice is the male’s white shirt and blue bowtie. The female has two bowties, one blue, the other rusty red, making her more colorful than her mate, which is actually a rare trait among birds. Both sexes appear to be wearing blue-gray tailcoats, and seem like they’re headed for a formal party somewhere.
Yup’ik people I’ve spoken to call the Belted kingfisher, Neqaiq, meaning “fish (food)-stealing bird,” which recognizes that it both eats fish and competes in some way for the same resource as the people of the Delta. It’s curious this is a name that also describes the Canada jay, raven, magpie and various gull species because of their similar habit of filching fish and other food.
The kingfisher’s Greek scientific name, Megaceryle alcyon, simply means “large kingfisher.” According to Greek legend, Alcyone was the daughter of Aeolus, god of the winds. After her devoted husband Ceyx drowned at sea in a storm, the gods took pity on Alcyone and transformed her into a kingfisher so she could be close to him.
Almost as soon as the river ice goes out in spring the male kingfisher returns from his winter travels. He immediately stakes out a feeding territory and nesting site. When the female arrives a little later, they pair up with seemingly little fanfare and then remain together as they share all of the domestic activities of nest building and child rearing.
Often this means an awful lot of work, especially if they have to construct a new nest. These nests are mostly excavated in the sides of riverbanks and can take up to three weeks to dig, depending on the type of soil. The tunnel to the nest is three inches in diameter and can be up to 15 feet long. The average is 3-7 feet, though, and leads to a rounded chamber about 6×10 inches in size, often lined with clean white fish bones and scales from food pellets disgorged by the adults. Sometimes Bank swallows will cohabit with kingfishers by digging side pockets in the main tunnel for their own nests.
Both male and female birds incubate the 6-7 white eggs for about three weeks. After the eggs hatch, while mom remains in the nest caring for the chicks, dad does double duty catching the food and bringing it back to help feed their offspring. The young are born without feathers, but within a week feathers appear in sheaths and stay unopened for two more weeks. In this condition the baby birds look more like tiny porcupines. On the 17-18th day after hatching, all the feathers burst forth from their sheaths within 24 hours and the porkies suddenly turn into birds.
During the fledgling stage, the kingfisher family stays within 100 yards of each other, and the parents rattle-call constantly as they feed fish to their youngsters. Within a week or two after leaving the nest the young learn to catch and eat fish on their own. This is no easy task, as they awkwardly try to imitate their parents, first hovering 20-40 feet above the water, spiral diving into the water, disappearing for a few seconds under the surface as they search for and seize their prey, then quickly rising and flying back up to their perch to prepare to eat it. They next beat the fish to death on the limb, toss it into the air and swallow it headfirst.
The young not only have to learn to catch fish. Tadpoles, frogs, insects and their larvae, other young birds, mice and even berries all require their own special hunting strategies. There is the added challenge of having to digest all of the roughage that comes with their food, including bones, fish scales and insect and crustacean shells. When they’re still only nestlings the young have very acidic stomachs, which allow them to do just that, but by the time they fly the coop their stomach chemistry has changed and they must learn to regurgitate pellets of fish bones and scales and other indigestible parts of their foods like the adults do.
Y-K Delta and other Alaskan Belted kingfishers migrate south during the winter as far as they have to in order to find open water to fish. Others that nest further south, though, may travel as far as Central America and the northern parts of South America where they defend small exclusive feeding territories.
Although Neqaiq is still fairly common and widespread in most parts of North America, the species is decreasing in some areas due to continuous habitat loss caused by humans. They, like most native wild birds, are sensitive to disturbance, especially during their nesting season, and may abandon their breeding areas when there is too much noise.
