Maybe the two branches were in the way of her flight path to a fish if she saw one below and in front of her so she was trying to get rid of them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe more I thought about it the more I leaned toward the third option. I’ll try to explain why by using a photo of a different kingfisher, below.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/belted-kingfisher-2843-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-2843-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
When kingfishers dive after a fish they really don’t like to take detours. The fish they capture are typically quite small, very quick and they often spend only a very brief time on or near the surface of the water so there’s no time to waste. When kingfishers dive after a fish they almost explode off their perch in a beeline straight toward the fish. Any detour, however small, is counterproductive.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t until I posted the following two photos to my blog four days ago that I realized I had evidence to support the third explanation for her unusual behavior.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/belted-kingfisher-7783-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-7783-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
Only moments after she quit wrestling with the branches she dove after a fish below her. But she couldn’t head straight for the fish because those annoying small branches were in the way. So she had to take a detour by first flying up a few inches…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/belted-kingfisher-7784-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-7784-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
and then forward…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/belted-kingfisher-7785-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-7785-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
and then down after the fish. That detour allowed her to avoid the branches but it cost her time. I don’t remember if she caught the fish.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So I believe she was trying to get rid of those darn branches. Pretty smart bird if you ask me, even if she didn’t have the muscle power to get it done.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the years I’ve spent countless hours watching kingfishers through my lens but until a few days ago I’d never seen this.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2853,5,334,392,395],"tags":[2329,1239,144,146,768,190,2330,311,5835],"class_list":["post-100202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-miscellaneous","tag-belted-kingfisher","tag-diving","tag-fishing","tag-flight","tag-immature","tag-juvenile","tag-megaceryle-alcyon","tag-utah-2","tag-wrestling-with-branches"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/belted-kingfisher-7715-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-q4a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/belted-kingfisher-7420-arrow-added-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-7420-arrow-added-ron-dudley\\""){kind=icon}
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/belted-kingfisher-7476-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-7476-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/belted-kingfisher-7480-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"belted-kingfisher-7480-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n