Striped Kingfisher
Halcyon chelicuti
A small and dainty woodland-dwelling kingfisher with powder-blue tail and flight feathers, creamy collar, dark eye-stripe, and streaky brown crown. Singles and pairs are inconspicuous in the mid-canopy of parkland-like savanna and woodland, preferring more arid thornveld than other dryland kingfishers. It draws attention to itself with a loud, ringing “teeep-tiiii-rrrrrrr” and rollicking “trrreerrr-treeerr-treeer” calls.
Identification
The striped kingfisher of the nominate subspecies H. c. chelicuti averages 16 to 18 cm (about 6.5 in) from beak to tail. Perched adults look mostly greyish brown on the upper part of the body. The lower back, secondary flight feathers, and tail are metallic blue; this colour is much more visible when the bird flies than when it is perched, as is a white patch at the base of the primary flight feathers. The wing linings are white with a black border, and in males a black bar at the base of the primaries. The underparts are off-white, buffier on the breast, with brown streaks on the sides in Kenyan birds and also on the breast in southern African birds. Also streaked dark brown is the top of the head, with the background buffy grey in males and brownish in females. The sides of the head, throat, and a collar around the back of the neck continue the off-white of the underparts. A black line goes around the back of the neck, above the white collar, and through the eyes. The bill is blackish above and at the tip, otherwise reddish-orange below.<p>The juvenile resembles the adult but is paler. It has less blue on the wings, a darker crown, dusky tips to the breast feathers, and dull red on the lower mandible.<p>The call is distinctive, "a high-pitched, piercing 'cheer-cherrrrrr'" or a far-carrying "KEW, kerrrrrrrrr" in which the rs represent a repeated descending trill lower in pitch than the first note. It is often given at dusk in a display where the bird opens its wings.<p>The northern subspecies H. c. eremogiton has a grey-brown crown and mantle and almost unstreaked underparts.
Taxonomy
The holotype of Alaudo chelicuti Stanley (Salt's Voyage to Abyssinia, 1814, App. IV. p.lvi. (=56)) is held in the vertebrate zoology collection of National Museums Liverpool at World Museum, with accession number NML-VZ D2304b. The specimen was collected in Abyssinia = Ethiopia in 1809/10 by Henry Salt. The specimen came to the Liverpool national collection via the 13th Earl of Derby's collection which was bequeathed to the people of Liverpool in 1851.
- Scientific name
- Halcyon chelicuti
- Authority
- (Stanley, 1814)
- Order
- Coraciiformes
- Family
- Halcyonidae
- Genus
- Halcyon
Range and habitat
This species occurs in Sub-Saharan Africa except in dense forests (especially near the Congo River), the Horn of Africa, the Namib Desert and South Africa. It prefers woodland, thorn scrub (thornveld), dry bush, and open savanna, but avoids intensively farmed land.<p>There are two subspecies: H. c. chelicuti in most of the range, and H. c. eremogiton (Hartert, 1921) in the northern desert parts of the range from central Mali to the White Nile region of eastern Sudan. They hybridize in southern Mali.
- Migration
- Resident species
Conservation
- Population trend
- stable
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
Other Birds
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Very rare and enigmatic large raptor that is endemic to Madagascar. Occurs very locally in pristine eastern rainforest, where it hunts inside of the forest, never soaring. Call is a series of low “how” notes, sometimes delivered in slow series and sometimes more quickly and emphatically. Very similar to Henst’s Goshawk. Subtle differences include slightly larger size, denser barring on the chest, thinner black bands on the tail, and dark barring on the back.
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