Kingfishers | Alcedinidae

IJsvogels | Martines pescadores

Compactly built birds with a large head, a long straight dagger of a bill, a very short tail and small syndactyl feet that are hardly walked on. They fish from a branch over the water or from a hover: the bird drops in head first, seizes the fish crosswise, stuns it against the perch and swallows it head first, bringing bones and scales back up as pellets. The flight is fast, low and dead straight over the water, on whirring wings. The nest is an unlined chamber at the end of a tunnel in a steep earth bank; the round white eggs lie on the remains of pellets, and the young carry their growing feathers for a long time in horny sheaths.