Belted kingfisher in British Columbia. King for a reason.

The belted kingfisher is one of my favourite birds.  Although they are not overly colourful and are honestly very hard to approach, their raucous nature allows easy identification.  They are not shy to perform when being watched, as long as you are at a distance or have been well-positioned inside a blind for quite some time.  They typically have preferred perches along a wooded shoreline; sometimes they will use nearby electrical wires strung between poles where they can watch surface waters for a possible meal.  I have also seen them hove in midair over a hunting spot awaiting the right time to strike.

Their method of fishing is well-crafted.  They peruse their environment from a perch located high above a water body.  When they see signs of activity, something typically minnow-sized, they will spring into action.  Diving down, almost vertically, they plunge into the water, typically completely disappearing beneath its surface, only to rise moments later with a fish grasped tightly in its beak.

The above photo is of a male; the female has a red stripe beneath the blue band.  It is the presence of this stripe that has given the belted kingfisher its moniker.  It is unusual that the female has this extra dash of colour; usually such displays are only found in the male of the species where dimorphism exists.  

I photographed this in July of 2020 using a D500 Nikon camera with a 150-600 mm lens.  A shutter speed of 1/400th of a second prevented significant blur from camera motion.  I was in my kayak on a pond at the time; I usually find that even mild pitching and rolling can reduce details in an image significantly which is why I prefer to use faster shutter speeds, even if vibration mitigation technology is employed.

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