Drive East along Highway 45 and, after you cross Riss Lake, look to your left. Perching on the drooping power line, a stocky blue-gray bird with a broad white collar watches intently for movement in the water below.
Its large shaggy-crested head causes my friend Carol to call it the "Elvis Bird.” But the Kingfisher’s celebrity pre-dates the birth of Rock ‘n Roll. Our local Belted Kingfisher is from the Family Alcedinidae, commonly called Halcyons. In Greek Mythology, Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus (King of the Winds) found her husband Ceyx tragically drowned, and in her grief, drowned herself. But the Gods took pity upon the devoted couple and turned them into Kingfishers. King Aeolus forbade the winds to blow during the “Halcyon Days,” seven days before and seven after the winter solstice when, according to legend, the Kingfisher lays her eggs in a floating nest upon calm and peaceful seas.
Kingfishers do not, in fact, build floating nests. Instead the devoted couple takes turns using their beaks and feet to excavate a long burrow near the top of a sandy bank, gravel pit or the soil around an upturned tree. The female lays 6 or 7 white eggs in the nesting chamber. Both parents incubate them. Chicks hatch with sheathed feathers and they resemble tiny porcupines until the sheaths break to expose mature feathers. Adult Kingfishers share in the feeding of the young, and announce their arrival outside the burrow with their trademark rattle call.
You might hear Kingfishers’ rattle call as they dart above the trees in English Landing Park. If you are watchful, you could see one hover, plunge vertically and disappear into the water to catch its prey. Returning to his perch, the Elvis Bird always makes sure the fish is “All Shook Up” before he tosses it into the air and swallows it head first.
Quite an act!
