Laughing Kookaburra

As the batsmen of the 2015 ICC world-cup are facing the Kookaburra balls, I had the delight to face the real Kookaburra- the Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae ).
The Kookaburra belongs to the Kingfisher family and is the worlds biggest Kingfisher. Its call, which it makes to mark its territory sounded like a laughter to whoever named it- well not to me though. They hunt like kingfishers and eat a variety of prey, including fish, small snakes, lizards, rodents, worms, beetles and other insects. It is a pretty common bird in Australia, found both around human settlements and forests. The kookaburra is one classical example of a bird, which is severely affected by the pesticides used in farming.  The pesticides used to kill insects, end up poisoning the animals which usually feed on those pests. When kookaburras eat contaminated insects, they absorb the pesticide chemicals and store them in their fat. When food is in short supply and the kookaburras use some of their fat store, high concentrations of chemicals may flow into the blood. The result can be reproductive losses or even death.
I had a very wonderful evening with this lovely bird- I even managed to sip a cup of tea, watching the Kookaburra bully other birds that were trying to hunt alongside it. A wonderful bird indeed!

Pied Kingfisher

I was sitting and watching this Pied kingfisher, perched on a wire, passing across a stream. The pied kingfisher was suppose to hover on top of the prey and hunt for it, not perch upon a wire. Seemed like humans had made its life a wee bit easy. 

 It made a number of hunting sorties from this perched position, and returned empty beaked !

It was probably at the 5th of 6th attempt that it successfully emerged with its catch. Congrats! 

Stork Billed Kingfisher

Whenever we have a chance my wife and I used to visit a small brook close to our house. This brook was a hunting spot for atleast three species of Kingfishers. But last month when we visited the place, it was sad to see the brook being bunded and diverted- this has made the fish disappear and we did not spot any kingfishers too.

We spotted this bird, perched on the wire for more than half an hour apparently doing nothing. Then in a moments notice, it suddenly dived and came out with this catch. It did not swallow the catch, but rater flew away with it. This bird actually belongs to the tree kingfisher family, and catching fish is not its forte. It prefers reptiles and small mammals.

A beautiful bird to watch and my wife and I had a lovely time just watching this miracle of nature do its everyday work.

White Breasted Kingfisher

This White breasted Kingfisher, is a resident bird in our backyard. We have named him Beaky. This year beaky managed to find a partner for himself and we have two Kingfishers in our yard now, and its hard to quickly tell them apart. 

They already seem to have built a nest in our well and now we are looking forward for upcoming junior Beaky's

For a longtime I wrongly assumed that kingfishers only ate fish- they eat a lot of other delicacies too. I have spotted Beaky with worms, frogs, small lizards and some other unidentifiable creatures that did not look like fish in any way.

During his bachelor days Beaky used to follow me when I went about photographing birds in our yard. One day I heard Beaky, give a very different kind of cry. On looking around I spotted a dog, and realised Beaky was warning me about the presence of an intruder.

The bird is also called white throated kingfisher or Smyrna Kingfisher and is a tree kingfisher of the family Halcyonidae. 

All Photographs clicked on Canon 7D - 100-400mm lens with wide open aperture. 

Pied Kingfisher

In my September 2008 post I had featured a Pied Kingfisher sitting on a power cable; this time I was lucky enough to spot one engaged in fishing. Though I must admit that I could not get good close up images, but hopefully these convey its fishing technique.
The bird hovers over a potential fishing spot at about a height of 15-20 meters for a considerable period of time. When a fish comes within striking depth, it speeds itself towards the prey, with wings pulled by the sides. It dives into the water emerges with its prey and flies off to a convenient rock or branch, where the prey is battered before being swallowed. This is a very spectacular scene to watch and I enjoyed every bit if it.

Continuing From my previous post: ( 10 photography mistakes I knowingly commit)
Mistake 5:Using the Wrong Choice of metering:What would happen if you chose matrix metering for a photograph like the ones above?. The kingfisher forms a tiny part of the photograph, which is mostly sky otherwise. Hence the camera would expose for the bright sky and would choose a faster shutter speed. The sky would come very beautiful with all its clouds, but what would happen to the kingfisher? It would be a dark blob on the photograph. Fortunately for the above photograph I had used spot metering and metered the bird. But this does not always happen to me, many times I have photographed flying birds or birds at sea with the wrong choice of metering with the resulting photograph being truly unusable. Today I have made it a practice to look at the metering mode chosen before I venture into the clicking business. But we all have our memory limitations.

White Breasted Kingfisher

This is my second post on the white breasted kingfisher(Halcyon smyrnesis), I decided to do this one because this time around I managed to get a closer view of the bird. This kingfisher had landed on my ship when we were anchred of kandla, Gujarath.
This brilliant turquoise - blue bird with chocolate brown head and a red bill is found through out India mostly because it is least dependent on water and can survive even in forests far away from water bodies feeding on grasshoppers and other insects.

Small Blue Kingfisher

I'm having a kingfisher bonanza for the last few days, this time encountered the Small Blue Kingfisher and the Pied Kingfisher still remains elusive. It was a nice opportunity for me to watch this kingfisher go about hunting. It was scanning around, sitting on the highest available point close to the waterbody, all the time bobbing its head or swaying it accompanied by a jerk with its tail followed by a click sound. At the sight of prey, it flew very low over the water surface, quickly dropped its beak into the water, picked its prey and flew to some other spot to relish on its prey. In about 10 minutes, this bluish-green bird had caught three fishes and then flew off with a 'chichee, chichee' sound.
The third photograph is after a successful hunt but just before devouring the fish.
In the second photograph, the sun was directly opposite the camera and was casting strong shadows on the bird. Inorder to photograph the bird, I had to spot meter the shadow area and use a slower shutter speed, hence the background is completely washed out and reveals no details.

White Breasted Kingfisher

This is the 150th post on ' Friendly Animals ' and I would like to thank all of you for reading through the posts and certainly the comments which are always welcome.
The last post featured a Pied Kingfisher, but the photograph was not a close up and to get a closer view, I went to the same place again. This time instead of the Pied kingfisher, I saw this White Breasted Kingfisher, munching on a tasty frog.
This is the most familiar of all kingfishers and since it is least dependant on water, it is seen not only near water bodies but also in areas far from them. If not fishing, this turquoise-blue bird preys on lizard, grasshoppers and other similar insects; on rare occasions it has been spotted hunting other smaller birds and mice.
Photographed with Sony H-7; 1.7x telephoto; f/4.5
P.S: For the second photograph, I could not place my tripod in the water, because of the slushy river bed and had to hold the camera, to reduce the camera shake. I deliberately underexposed the photograph by choosing a faster shutter speed and later corrected the image with photoshop.
Post-processing: Levels, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation for blue and red and sharpness.

Lesser Pied Kingfisher

As of now, this is the best photograph that I could manage of the Lesser Pied Kingfisher. The bird generally fishes for food by hovering over the water and this one was lucky to have a power cable passing over the water in its hunting range, making life a bit easier for him. Once the bird has caught a prey, it flies to a nearby rock and batters its prey before swallowing.
Their nests are generally tunnels on the mudbank of streams.
Photographed on Nethravathi River, standing on the Panemangloor bridge.
Sony H-7 ,1.7x telephoto
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White Throated Kingfisher

Spotted this beauty on a TV antenna, the sun was facing the camera and creating shadows on the bird. Hence I spot metered the birds dark areas and hence to get the details of the birds had to overexpose the sky.
This is the most common of the kingfisher here in coastal Karnataka. During flight a white patch is visible in its blue wings and looks very pretty in flight.

f/4.5 , 1.7x telephoto , spot metering