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Kingfishers are birds of the three tismand Alcedinidae (river kingfishers), Halcyonidae (tree kingfishers), and Cerylidae (water kingfishers). There are about 90 species of kingfisher. All have large heads, long, sharp, pointed bills, short legs, and stubby tails. They are found throughout the world.


 


Habitat: Kingfishers live in both woodland and wetland habitats. The Laughing Kookaburra (the world's largest kingfisher) is a woodland bird, while the European Kingfisher Alcedo atthis is always found near fresh water.

Range: The Old World tropics and Australasia are the core area for
this group. Europe and North America north of Mexico are very poorly represented with only one common kingfisher (European and Belted Kingfishers respectively), and a couple of uncommon or very local species each: (Ringed Kingfisher and Green Kingfisher in south Texas, Pied Kingfisher and White-breasted Kingfisher in SE Europe).

Even tropical South America has only five species plus wintering Belted Kingfisher. In comparison, the tiny African country of The Gambia has eight resident species in its 120 by 20 mile area.

The six species occurring in the Americas are four closely related green kingfishers in the genus Chloroceryle and two large crested kingfishers in the genus
Megaceryle, suggesting that the sparse representation
in the western hemisphere evolved from just one or two original colonising species.

Hunting Styles: Kingfishers that live near water hunt small fish by diving. They also eat crayfish, frogs, and insects. Wood kingfishers eat reptiles. Kingfishers of all three families beat their prey to death, either by whipping it against a tree or by dropping it on a stone.

No Need For Glasses or Goggles: Kingfishers are able to see well both in air and under water. To do so, their eyes have
evolved an egg-shaped lense able to focus in the two different environments.


Classification Confusion: Kingfishers are birds of the three tismand Alcedinidae (river kingfishers), Halcyonidae (tree kingfishers), and Cerylidae (water kingfishers).

The taxonomy of the three families is complex and rather controversial. Although commonly assigned to the order Coraciiformes, after this level of classification, confusion sets in.

All in the Family: The kingfishers were traditionally treated as one family, Alcedinidae with three subfamilies, but following the 1990s revolution in bird taxonomy, the three former subfamilies are now usually elevated to familial level; a move supported by chromosome and DNA-DNA hybridisation studies, but challenged on the grounds that all three groups are monophyletic with respect to the other Coraciiformes; which leads to them being grouped as the suborder Alcedines.

 

They Started in the Trees: The tree kingfishers have been previously given the familial name Dacelonidae, but Halcyonidae has priority. This group derives from a very ancient divergence from the ancestral stock.

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

   
 

 
 Kingdom: 
Animalia

 Phylum: Chordata

 Class: Aves

 Order: Coraciiformes

 Suborder: Alcedines