Kingfishers, Pittas, Rollers & Bee-eaters

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About Kingfishers, Pittas, Rollers & Bee-eaters

There is another large, dedicated Kingfisher group - www.flickr.com/groups/world_of_the_kingfisher/ and several smaller Kingfisher groups to be found. And there are quite a few Kookaburra groups besides. But ours is more inclusive!

Objectives of the group - To present an interesting, varied collection of high quality bird images from the relevant family as described below.

Kingfishers and Kookaburras are a group of small to medium sized brightly coloured birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species being found in the Old World and Australia. The group is treated either as a single family, Alcedinidae, or as a suborder Alcedines containing three families, Alcedinidae (river kingfishers), Halcyonidae (tree kingfishers, aka Kookaburras in Australia), and Cerylidae (water kingfishers).

There are roughly 90 species of kingfisher. All have large heads, long, sharp, pointed bills, short legs, and stubby tails. Most species have bright plumage with little 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 as well as fish, usually caught by swooping down from a perch.

Like other members of their order they nest in cavities, usually tunnels dug into the natural or artificial banks in the ground. A few species, principally insular forms, are threatened with extinction. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingfisher

Pizzey and Knight say 95 species (Australia 10).

Pittas are a family, Pittidae, of passerine birds mainly found in tropical Asia and Australasia, although a couple of species live in Africa. Pittas are all similar in general structure and habits, and have often been placed in a single genus, although as of 2009 they are now split into three genera, Pitta, Erythropitta and Hydrornis. The name is derived from the word pitta in the Telugu language of Andhra Pradesh in India and is a generic local name used for all small birds. Pittas are medium-sized by passerine standards, at 15–25 cm (5.9–9.8 in) in length, and stocky, with longish strong legs and long feet. They have very short tails and stout, slightly decurved bills. Many, but not all, have brightly coloured plumage.

I was inclined to leave out Pittas because they do belong to the Passeriformes, but that would leave them without a perch of any kind, so we shall let them continue to roost here and besides, they are pretty cute.

The Rollers are an Old World family, Coraciidae, of near passerine birds. The group gets its name from the aerial acrobatics some of these birds perform during courtship or territorial flights. Rollers resemble crows in size and build, and share the colourful appearance of kingfishers and bee-eaters, blues and pinkish or cinnamon browns predominating. The two inner front toes are connected, but not the outer one.

They are mainly insect eaters, with Eurystomus species taking their prey on the wing, and those of the genus Coracias diving from a perch to catch food items from on the ground, like giant shrikes.

Although living rollers are birds of warm climates in the Old World, fossil records show that rollers were present in North America during the Eocene. They are monogamous and nest in an unlined hole in a tree or in masonry, and lay 2–4 eggs in the tropics, 3–6 at higher latitudes. The eggs, which are white, hatch after 17–20 days, and the young remain in the nest for approximately another 30 days.

The roller family Coraciidae is one of nine in the order Coraciiformes, which also includes the motmots, bee-eaters, todies, ground-rollers, Cuckoo Roller and three families of kingfishers. Apart from the ground-rollers, these families do not appear to be particularly closely related to the rollers, and the Coraciiformes are therefore probably polyphyletic. The division of the rollers into two genera is uncontroversial. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollers