Kingfisher facts 🦜 Most species have bright plumage

Welcome to Animal World. We are glad that you are here, and will be happier with a subscription. Kingfishers are a family of small to medium-sized, brightly colored birds. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species found in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The family contains 114 species. All kingfishers have large heads, long, sharp, pointed bills, short legs, and stubby tails. Most species have bright plumage, with only small differences between the sexes. Most species are tropical in distribution, and a slight majority are found only in forests. They consume a wide range of prey usually caught by swooping down from a perch. While kingfishers are usually thought to live near rivers and eat fish, many species live away from water and eat small invertebrates. Like other members of their order, they nest in cavities, usually tunnels dug into the natural or artificial banks in the ground. Some kingfishers nest in arboreal termite nests. A few species, principally insular forms, are threatened with extinction. In Britain, the word kingfisher normally refers to the common kingfisher. The smallest species of kingfisher is the African dwarf kingfisher, which averages 10 centimeters in length. The largest kingfisher in Africa is the giant kingfisher, which is 42 to 46 centimeters in length. The familiar Australian kingfisher, known as the laughing kookaburra, is the heaviest species. The plumage of most kingfishers is bright, with green and blue being the most common colors. The brightness of the colors is neither the product of iridescence or pigments, but is instead caused by the structure of the feathers, which causes scattering of blue light. The kingfishers have long, dagger-like bills. The bill is usually longer and more compressed in species that hunt fish, and shorter and more broad in species that hunt prey off the ground. The largest and most atypical bill is that of the shovel-billed kookaburra, which is used to dig through the forest floor in search of prey. They generally have short legs, although species that feed on the ground have longer tarsi. Most species have four toes, three of which are forward-pointing. Kingfishers feed on a wide variety of prey. They are most famous for hunting and eating fish, and some species do specialize in catching fish, but other species take crustaceans, frogs and other amphibians, annelid worms, mollusks, insects, spiders, centipedes, reptiles, and even birds and mammals. Kingfishers usually hunt from an exposed perch. When a prey item is observed, the kingfisher swoops down to snatch it, then returns to the perch. Kingfishers are territorial, some species defending their territories vigorously. They are generally monogamous, although cooperative breeding has been observed in some species, and is quite common in others, for example the laughing kookaburra, where helpers aid the dominant breeding pair in raising the young. Like all carassiiformes, the kingfishers are cavity nesters as well as tree nesters, with most species nesting in holes dug in the ground. These holes are usually in earth banks on the sides of rivers, lakes or man-made ditches. Some species may nest in holes in trees, the earth clinging to the roots of an uprooted tree, or arboreal nests of termites. These termite nests are common in forest species. The nests take the form of a small chamber at the end of a tunnel. Nest digging duties are shared between the genders. During the initial excavations, the bird may fly at the chosen site with considerable force, and birds have injured themselves fatally while doing this. Thank you so much for being with me till the end, let us protect our wildlife, just like our pets. May you please watch our next video.