Common Kingfisher

About the Common Kingfisher

The Common Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) is one of Europe's most electric-looking birds — cobalt-blue back, orange belly, dagger-sharp bill, no bigger than a sparrow. Most people who spot one see a low, straight blue flash over a river and then nothing.

Kingfishers are found across Europe, Asia and North Africa. They are a strong indicator of freshwater health: they can only survive on rivers, canals and lakes clean enough to hold small fish and clear enough to see them.

Habitat & range

Kingfishers need slow-flowing or still, unpolluted water with clear visibility and low, overhanging perches to hunt from. They dig their nest tunnels — up to a metre long — into vertical earth banks along riverbanks and disused quarries.

Severe winters that freeze rivers, and summer floods that collapse nest tunnels, are the two biggest natural threats.

Diet

The Kingfisher's diet is around 60% small fish (minnows, sticklebacks, bullheads, small trout), with aquatic insects and freshwater shrimp making up the rest. A pair with a full brood needs to catch around 100 fish a day.

Kingfishers hunt by watching from a low perch, then diving head-first with wings folded, closing a transparent third eyelid the moment they hit the water.

Behaviour & life cycle

Kingfishers are strongly territorial and mostly solitary outside the breeding season. Territories are stretched along a linear kilometre or two of river.

In spring, the male courtship-feeds the female with a fish held head-first. Pairs raise 2–3 broods a year in a chamber at the end of the earth tunnel; the chicks are fed a constant supply of small fish and leave the nest in about 25 days.

Main threats

River pollution — especially agricultural run-off and sewage discharges — reduces fish stocks and clouds the water so Kingfishers can no longer see prey. Bank engineering, canalisation and the loss of natural earth banks destroys nesting sites. Cold winters that freeze fresh water for weeks can crash local populations.