White-throated Kingfisher

How to identify

Field marks

1. Throat and breast white
2. Large bill, legs, and feet bright red
3. Back, wings, and tail bright blue; large white wing patches visible in flight
4. Head, scapulars, body sides, and lower belly chestnut

Male, female and young

Sexes similar; juvenile is duller than adult.

Voice

Calls loudly from conspicuous sites early in the morning during the breeding season; female gives repeated “kit-kit-kit” when soliciting mating.

Where and when it's recorded

White-throated Kingfisher has been recorded at 1,204 of the 8,171 birding hotspots we track, in 28 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

Where it's recorded most

1. GKVK CampusIndia6,877 records
2. Kanha NP – Mukki ZoneIndia5,811 records
3. Bharatpur – Keoladeo Ghana NPIndia4,550 records

Countries and regions with the most records

IndiaIsraelChinaSingaporeThailandSri LankaNepalMalaysia

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The white-throated kingfisher (Halcyon smyrnensis) also known as the white-breasted kingfisher is a tree kingfisher, widely distributed in Asia from the Sinai east through the Indian subcontinent to China and Indonesia. This kingfisher is a resident over much of its range, although some populations may make short distance movements. It can often be found well away from water where it feeds on a wide range of prey that includes small reptiles, amphibians, crabs, small rodents and even birds.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

Questions