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Transcript:
This is BirdNote.
Kingfishers. They fish. Right? The clues in the name. Over most of the waters of North America, its the Belted Kingfisher. Europes single species is the small, brilliant blue, much beloved Common Kingfisher.
But when you hit tropical regions of Asia, Africa, and especially the vicinity of Australia, its clear that despite the group name, most of the roughly 90 species of kingfishers dont fish. They hunt in woodlands, where the smaller ones, like the four-inch pygmy kingfisher, will eat grasshoppers and centipedes, and the larger ones will take frogs, reptiles, small mammals, and even snakes.
Yup. Australias Laughing Kookaburra is a member of the kingfisher family. And its been known to dispatch snakes up to three feet in length.
No matter whether the kingfisher you see is wrangling a snake or plunging for a fish, youll be looking at a member of one of the worlds most charismatic groups of birds.
For BirdNote, I'm Michael Stein.
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Credits:
Written by Bob Sundstrom
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Dominic Black
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Belted Kingfisher [100770] recorded by W L Hershberger. Common Kingfisher [56643]recorded by Scott Connop. Laughing Kookaburra [6582] recorded by F N Robinson
BirdNotes theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
穢 2015 Tune In to Nature.org
July 2017 ID #: kingfisher-02-2015-07-20 kingfisher-02