This listing is for a limited edition, fine art print of my original painting of a Belted Kingfisher called, “It’s Changing Like the Tide, Like It Always Has”

The majority of the time, male birds are a bit fancier than the females. This largely has to do with the fact that the males have to do the hard work of impressing the females, often times with their beauty (a bit different than how things work with us humans, eh?).

But in the case of the belted kingfisher, the female gets an extra splash of flare with a rust-colored belt. There are numerous theories around why this might be the case. One thought: the males settle the nests earlier than the females and become incredibly territorial. Being able to immediately recognize a potential mate from a distance becomes advantageous, you know, so you don’t accidentally chase her away from home.

Alas, no one has been able to talk to the birds to see what the real story is, so we’re just left with best guesses.

The Making Of…

About the Bird

More about the Belted Kingfisher

From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Basic Description

With its top-heavy physique, energetic flight, and piercing rattle, the Belted Kingfisher seems to have an air of self-importance as it patrols up and down rivers and shorelines. It nests in burrows along earthen banks and feeds almost entirely on aquatic prey, diving to catch fish and crayfish with its heavy, straight bill. These ragged-crested birds are a powdery blue-gray; males have one blue band across the white breast, while females have a blue and a chestnut band.

As nestlings, Belted Kingfishers have acidic stomachs that help them digest bones, fish scales, and arthropod shells. But by the time they leave the nest, their stomach chemistry apparently changes, and they begin regurgitating pellets which accumulate on the ground around fishing and roosting perches. Scientists can dissect these pellets to learn about the kingfisher’s diet without harming or even observing any wild birds.

Belted Kingfishers wander widely, sometimes showing up in the Galapagos Islands, Hawaii, the British Isles, the Azores, Iceland, Greenland, and the Netherlands.

Pleistocene fossils of Belted Kingfishers (to 600,000 years old) have been unearthed in Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, and Texas. The oldest known fossil in the kingfisher genus is 2 million years old, found in Alachua County, Florida.