Kingfisher is a very beautiful bird, belonging to the medium water bird. The kingfisher has a blue-black head, a blue back, a chestnut-brown belly, and a red mouth and claws. Looks like a woodpecker from a distance.
Kingfishers live in shrubs or woods, clear rivers, lakes, and other waters. They're solitary animals that live on branches or rocks near the water. Except during the breeding season, kingfishers will nest with both sexes and hatch together. Their diet is mainly small fish, but they also eat some crustaceans and aquatic insects, occasionally small frogs, and a few plants. When the kingfisher feeds, it does not swallow the fish, but beats it with its beak against a rock or branch until the fish is dead, and then swallows it whole.
Kingfishers can still see well after diving into the water. Because their eyes quickly adjust to the contrast in light when they enter the water, they are very good at catching fish. When they see prey, they hover in midair, flapping their wings to stay aloft. They're very fast when they hunt. We can see the kingfisher as it hunts the reeds on which it rests sway gently, and the next moment it has taken its prey and flown away.
Kingfishers can be found in most parts of continental Europe, Africa, and Asia. Most do not migrate with the climate and prefer to stay in one place for life.
From the habit, the kingfisher is alert, has good eyesight, flying extremely fast. Man-made killing is very difficult. And because it's a small bird, it doesn't stand out in nature. So the reason for the decline of kingfishers in recent years is not that people are killing them. Why are there fewer kingfishers? There are two reasons:
1. Less food.
In recent years, there are fewer and fewer fish in the wild water. There are two reasons: One is drought. This summer's drought has dried up many wild bodies of water; One is artificial capture. If it is just fishing, it will not pose much threat to the survival of fish. To improve efficiency, some people fish with electric or poisonous fish, which leads to disaster in wild waters. For kingfishers, whose main diet is fish, the lack of food has led to a gradual decline in their numbers.
2. Many people keep kingfishers as pets.
Because the feathers of the kingfisher are very beautiful, they are very ornamental. Kingfishers are caught and kept as pets. Kingfishers only eat live fish. They like to hunt for themselves. In terms of their health, kingfishers also need to eat insects, plants, and so on. All of this makes it very difficult to keep kingfishers, which is one of the reasons why they are becoming scarce.
The number of kingfishers has become less and less, and now we can judge the quality of an area's water environment by the number of kingfishers.