Common kingfisher,カワセミ

This is second installment of a six-part series of this feature article.

 Adult: Breeding season :Mmatchmaking and digging a hole for nesting

 Needless to say, the most important thing for animals to live is the acquisition of food.

In the case of kingfishers, according to ADW, they eat small fish, crustaceans and aquatic insects equivalent to 60% of their weight per day. It has a very strong territorial because it must secure a sufficient feeding ground for that. The range is said to be 1 km to 3 km.

Here, in February for breeding, males chase a female every day to determine the breeding partner. And the male starts digging the hole for nesting and the female also cooperates and does. From this time onwards, there is frequent courtship feeding that shows affection to the female until mating.

Moreover, the height of the nest hole from the water surface was 2m,and the nest burrow length I measured in the local was about 80 cm. The end of the burrow was wide sideways.

Average weight of adult bird of kingfisher：34ｇ（quate from ADW）

                                                  Male chases female

                               Mmatchmaking

                              a courtship feeding

                               Trying digging a nest hole 

                               A burrow dug in a shellmound

                                  a stone moroko,one of their prey

                                       an American Crayfish,above the same

Common kingfisher,カワセミ

This is first installment of a six-part series of this feature article.

Due to illness, in my front half of this year, as there were few outings to take wild bird photos, so, this time I will install of the life of kingfisher as a feature.

This time I will install six topics of kingfisher's life as a special feature.

Fortunately, I've taken a lot of kingfisher pictures in the past in Chiba Prefecture.

However, since I am neither a bird scholar nor a research fellow, I have installed this based on past my observations, and some quote from Wikipedia and Animal Diversity Web.

This feature is uploaded divided into six installments.

The content is as follows;

Adult: Non-breeding season

Adult: Breeding season and Matchmaking and mating

Adult: Nest making

Adult: Feeding feed and Tragedy

Leaving the nest

Becoming independent

Adult: Non-breeding season『July to December』

First of all, what I am interested in most concerned is how long the life span of kingfishers inhabiting in Japan is.

I found only one Japanese blog it was written to be 2-7 years.

However, according to another article such as Wikipedia English, Animal Diversity Web

as following,

Wikipedia: Only 25% survive from one breeding season to the next.

The longevity record is 21 years.

ADW: It can live for 15 years, but it's an average of seven years.

 　　　　　　　　　　bird ring,⇅