Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Coraciiformes > Alcedinidae > Megaceryle > Megaceryle alcyon

Megaceryle alcyon (Belted Kingfisher)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

The belted kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon) is a large, conspicuous water kingfisher, the only member of that group commonly found in the northern United States and Canada. It is depicted on the 1986 series Canadian $5 note. All kingfishers were formerly placed in one family, Alcedinidae, but recent research suggests that this should be divided into three subfamilies.
View Wikipedia Record: Megaceryle alcyon

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
5
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
27
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 11.0668
EDGE Score: 2.49046
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Clutch Size [6]  7
Clutches / Year [2]  1
Fledging [2]  28 days
Global Population (2017 est.) [3]  1,700,000
Incubation [1]  23 days
Mating System [4]  Monogamy
Water Biome [1]  Lakes and Ponds, Rivers and Streams, Coastal
Wing Span [1]  23 inches (.59 m)
Adult Weight [2]  152 grams
Birth Weight [4]  13.5 grams
Breeding Habitat [3]  Wetlands
Wintering Geography [3]  Widespread
Wintering Habitat [3]  Wetlands, Coastal saltmarshes
Diet [5]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Carnivore (Vertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Ectothermic [5]  10 %
Diet - Endothermic [5]  10 %
Diet - Fish [5]  70 %
Diet - Invertibrates [5]  10 %
Forages - Understory [5]  10 %
Forages - Ground [5]  10 %
Forages - Water Surface [5]  40 %
Forages - Underwater [5]  40 %
Female Maturity [2]  1 year
Male Maturity [2]  11 months 5 days

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

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Ecosystems

Biodiversity Hotspots

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Buteo jamaicensis (Red-tailed Hawk)[7]
Haliaeetus leucocephalus (Bald Eagle)[11]
Strix varia (Barred Owl)[7]
Vulpes vulpes (Red Fox)[7]

Providers

Shelter 
Acer saccharinum (silver maple)[7]
Platanus mexicana (American sycamore)[7]
Quercus alba (White Oak)[7]
Salix nigra (black willow)[7]

Consumers

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Audio

Play / PauseVolume
Provided by Birds Of A Feather on Myxer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 2Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 3Partners in Flight Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2017. Accessed on January 2018.
♦ 4Terje Lislevand, Jordi Figuerola, and Tamás Székely. 2007. Avian body sizes in relation to fecundity, mating system, display behavior, and resource sharing. Ecology 88:1605
♦ 5Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 6Jetz W, Sekercioglu CH, Böhning-Gaese K (2008) The Worldwide Variation in Avian Clutch Size across Species and Space PLoS Biol 6(12): e303. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060303
♦ 7Study of Northern Virginia Ecology
♦ 8Lafferty, K. D., R. F. Hechinger, J. C. Shaw, K. L. Whitney and A. M. Kuris (in press) Food webs and parasites in a salt marsh ecosystem. In Disease ecology: community structure and pathogen dynamics (eds S. Collinge and C. Ray). Oxford University Press, Oxford.
♦ 9Cirtwill, Alyssa R.; Eklöf, Anna (2018), Data from: Feeding environment and other traits shape species' roles in marine food webs, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1mv20r6
♦ 10National Geographic Magazine - May 2016 - Yellowstone - The Carnivore Comeback
♦ 11Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 12Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
♦ 13International Flea Database
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Audio software provided by SoundManager 2
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0