Wild Facts About The Belted Kingfisher

Quick Facts About Belted Kingfishers

Scientific Name	Megaceryle alcyon, formerly Ceryle alcyon
Common Name(s)	Belted Kingfisher
Animal Type	Water Bird
Diet	Small fish, crayfish, tadpoles, small frogs, salamanders, lizards
Found	Year-round resident of North Carolina. Look for Belted Kingfishers around freshwater ponds, lakes, streams, and rivers.
Description	Head feathers often look rumpled, thanks to crest made up of uneven length feathers. Both sexes: Slate blue head with long, thick, dagger-shaped black bill, and white spot in front of dark red-brown eyes. Slate blue wings have black tips and white patches that flash in flight. Slate blue tail. A wide steel gray chest band separates the white throat and neck feathers and the white belly. Females: Rust-colored chest band in addition to steel gray band. Rusty feathers along side and under wings.

Belted Kingfisher Images

Belted Kingfisher. Megaceryle alcyon. Bird. Photograph taken by the author. Copyright © 2025 Now I Wonder. All rights reserved.

Belted Kingfisher with fish. Megaceryle alcyon. Bird. Photograph taken by the author. Copyright © 2025 Now I Wonder. All rights reserved.

Belted Kingfisher with crayfish. Megaceryle alcyon. Bird. Photograph taken by the author. Copyright © 2025 Now I Wonder. All rights reserved.

Fun Facts About Belted Kingfisher

Belted Kingfishers Give Hours Of Entertainment

Belted Kingfishers are easy to spot in North Carolina, easy to track as they fly about their business, and quite hard to get close to.
They are easy to spot because they are widely distributed across the state and can be found nearly any body of freshwater.
Belted Kingfishers are quite skittish and fly off readily; they rarely let any human get close unless said human is hidden and quiet in a bird blind.
But Belted Kingfishers do seem to return to certain perches over the course of a day’s activity.
- So if you spot an individual bird, chances are good that it will return to the perch they do seem to prefer certain perches and return to the same handful of spots every time.
When hunting, Belted Kingfishers hover over water for a few moments, then dive straight into the water head-first after prey.

Belted Kingfishers Nest Where You Least Expect Them

Unlike many bird species that build above-ground or on-ground nests, Belted Kingfishers burrow into the ground to build their nests.
Adult Belted Kingfishers spend a lot of time searching their territories for suitable sites into which to dig their nests.
But not just any patch of ground will do.
- One study assessed 44 Belted Kingfisher nests along a 96.1km stretch of the Connecticut River in New England and found that this bird species seems to choose high, narrow banks with little vegetation for their nests (Silver and Griffin 2009, https://doi.org/10.1656/045.016.n403).
- In a Belted Kingfisher’s eyes, the perfect nest site should also:
  - Be near a river, stream, pond, or lake where they can fish,
  - Have at least one prominent perch within 100 feet (30.5m) of the bank face from which they can watch (Stokes and Stokes 1983).
Once a mated pair of Kingfishers finds a suitable site, both sexes work to excavate the nest.

Belted Kingfishers Build Their Nests Deep

Belted Kingfisher nests consist of:
- An entrance hole that is 3 – 4 inches in diameter and usually located 1 – 3 feet below the top of a steep, cutaway bank (Stokes and Stokes 1983).
- A round nest chamber nine to twelve inches in diameter and six to eight inches high, lined with soft, loose earth (Stokes and Stokes 1983).
- A tunnel that connects the entrance to the nest chamber that usually extends 3 – 6 feet or more deep into the banks (Stokes and Stokes 1983) but sometimes can be much longer.

Belted Kingfishers Prefer Existing Construction

Belted Kingfishers often re-use established nest burrows and will establish and actively defend their territories against other kingfishers.
Expending energy to maintain control over existing nest sites serves Belted Kingfishers well.
Digging nest burrows from scratch requires tremendous time and effort, especially since Belted Kingfisher anatomy is adapted for fishing, not digging.
One study sheds some light on how much work a Belted Kingfisher pair might have to do to create a nest burrow from scratch.
- During a 17 day observation period, a male and female Belted Kingfisher in Montana took turns ramming bill-first into a bank along a Montana stream.
- Both birds flew from their perches to within 1 – 3 m of the bank’s face, hovered briefly, then flew rapidly at the face and rammed it once with the tip of their bills.
- Over the course of 180 minutes of total observation, this pair of Belted Kingfishers rammed the bank bill-first 176 times (Hendricks, Richie, and Hendricks 2013, https://doi.org/10.1676/12-075.1).

Belted Kingfishers Make A Little Noise

Belted Kingfishers are known for being raucous, noisy birds. One type of distinctive Belted Kingfisher call is called the “rattle-call”.
The rattle-call is a fast, staccato, machine gun-like series of harsh sounds that form a continuous rattle-like call. Rattle-calls can be brief or prolonged.
Both sexes sound rattle-calls in a variety of circumstances.
- Rattle-calls are loudest when the birds are alarmed or during territorial skirmishes with intruders and softest when sounded between mates.

Belted Kingfishers Make Noise When Maybe They Shouldn’t

Although birds communicate with each other by making noise (by singing, calling, screaming, hooting, etc), most birds keep quiet when they arrive and depart from their nests.
- Theoretically, this makes it harder for nest predators to find the birds’ nests and eat their babies.
Surprisingly, Belted Kingfishers buck this trend. Instead of being as quiet and inconspicuous as possible, Belted Kingfishers usually make quite a racket as they arrive at their nests.
A study completed in Montana over 140.7 hours of observation found that Belted Kingfishers almost always sound their “rattle-call” in flight and within one second of approaching their nests.
- Out of 109 nest approaches, the Belted Kingfishers rattle-called 92.7% of the time,
- Out of 105 nest departures, the Belted Kingfishers rattle-called 56.2% of the time (Hendricks and Hendricks 2021, https://doi.org/10.1676/19-00099).

Don’t Sneak Up On A Belted Kingfisher Nest

Natural selection supports only those behaviors that enhance a species survival. Belted Kingfishers must gain an advantage from being so noisy around their nests.
On the one hand, it seems counterproductive for Belted Kingfishers to make so much noise when arriving at their nests, since attentive predators could then locate the nests and attack the nestlings.
On the other hand, perhaps potential nest predation is a risk the Belted Kingfishers consider worth taking. Why?
Belted Kingfishers are essentially blind when in their nests. These birds have excellent vision out in the light of day but very little light penetrates into the nest chambers of their subterranean nests.
This sets Belted Kingfishers up to “attack first and ask questions later” when they are on the nest.
- It likely behooves Belted Kingfishers to announce themselves to their mates, who wait in darkness, on edge and ready to defend their eggs or chicks.
- Belted Kingfishers come armed with a substantial weapon in the middle of their faces. Their bills are long, thick, strong, and sharply pointed.
- Sounding a rattle-call just before entering the nest may announce their identities to their waiting mates and prevent them from being injured or killed due to mistaken identity (Hendricks and Hendricks 2021, https://doi.org/10.1676/19-00099).
Unfortunately, this doesn’t explain why Belted Kingfishers rattle-call when leaving the nest. Only the birds themselves know for sure.

Christine

Christine is the creator and author of NowIWonder.com, a website dedicated to the animals and plants that share our world, and the science that helps us understand them. Inspired by lifelong exploration and learning, Christine loves to share her knowledge with others who want to connect with wild faces and wild spaces.

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