{"id":37481,"date":"2016-02-16T05:41:58","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T12:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=37481"},"modified":"2016-02-17T07:07:13","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T14:07:13","slug":"belted-kingfisher-fishing-techniques","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/16\/belted-kingfisher-fishing-techniques\/","title":{"rendered":"Belted Kingfisher Fishing Techniques"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the “experts” Belted Kingfishers usually don’t submerge when they dive for fish. This bird didn’t read that book.<\/p>\n

Four days ago I spent about an hour with a female Belted Kingfisher as she worked at filling her belly with fish near the Jordan River. Her fishing skills were impressive\u00a0but her dives were so very fast that it bordered on impossible for me to document the process. That doesn’t mean I didn’t try.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most often she watched for fish near the water’s\u00a0surface from branches overlooking the water. I tried to catch her in a dramatic take-off posture as she\u00a0dived\u00a0but she was so danged fast that this is as\u00a0close as I came without clipping body parts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

But occasionally she fished by hovering over the surface of the water.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here she’s hovering as she scans the water below her and an instant later…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

she spotted a fish and began her dive.<\/p>\n

Birds of North America Online out of Cornell has this to say about diving Belted Kingfishers\u00a0– “Because prey are usually near the water surface, the bird typically does not submerge”. We’ll see if this bird followed that script.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

Here the kingfisher has just entered the water (one day I’d like to photograph the actual entry but that has to be one of the biggest challenges in bird photography). The bird appears<\/em> to be completely\u00a0submerged but the following sequential images should tell the tale.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

This looks like total submersion to me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

Still no\u00a0sign of her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

Where is she?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

Finally she emerges with a fish (in this case another Weather Loach).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

This shot is very soft but I decided to include it for the sake of continuity.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"belted<\/p>\n

In the last image of the series the kingfisher makes her escape with the fish.<\/p>\n

I certainly don’t question the accuracy of BNA’s statement that kingfishers “typically do not submerge” –\u00a0after all, “typically” doesn’t mean “always”. But I was happy to photograph this apparent exception.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, BNA also says that kingfishers actually enter the water “with eyes closed”.\u00a0 If they catch a fish\u00a0that’s a pretty neat trick!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the “experts” Belted Kingfishers usually don’t submerge when they dive for fish. This bird didn’t read that book.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37484,"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":[2853,334,392],"tags":[2329,2289,1849,137,144,146,1347,188,2330,311],"class_list":["post-37481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belted-kingfishers","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-belted-kingfisher","tag-bna-online","tag-dive","tag-female","tag-fishing","tag-flight","tag-hovering","tag-jordan-river","tag-megaceryle-alcyon","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/belted-kingfisher-2756-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9Kx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37481","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=37481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}