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Chloroceryle americana (Gmelin, 1788)
Bird of the family Alcedinidae, the Green Kingfisher measures 19 cm and has the upper limbs in dark green, contrasting with a white band that connects the base of the beak to the neck, where it is crossed by the nuchal crest; wings crossed by three transverse lines of white spots; bases of white external rectrices. The male has the lower parts white with brown breast and the female has yellowish breast or white stained green.
To feed themselves, lands on vegetation at water's edge (between 1 and 3 meters), from where observe their prey before diving. Sometimes hangs in the air before diving. Eating fish from 3 to 5.5 centimeters and crustaceans, as a more general kind of eating habits.
It occurs from Texas and Mexico to Argentina and throughout Brazil. It is the most common species in Brazil. Inhabits lakes with rich aquatic vegetation, border small rivers and large, mangroves; fits even in small collections of water taken by marshy vegetation, such as water lilies and other aquatic plants.
Spotted on Aug 11, 2010
Submitted on Feb 20, 2016
7 Comments
Antonio, as long as the coordinates you're entering are right (and I understand they are from your reply), when our mapping system is fixed, or replaced by a new one, the right place name will eventually get allocated to these coordinates. Do not worry about the place name too much a this stage. You have the correct data in there.
Regarding the note, Malcolm Wilton-Jones, I always use Google Maps to get the coordinates of the photo's place, what is done with an accuracy 6 decimal places, and while Google Maps identifies the city's name correctly, when I enter the same coordinates into PN Google tool, the town's name is changed from Petropolis to Duque de Caxias, so, are not the coordinates that are causing the error.
If I follow your suggestion to change the pin in the map, the local shown will be not the right place where I took the photos.
However, it is not the case for this spotting, that was not from the problematic place, but you can simulate the bug using the following link:
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/-22.5381...
If you use the link above to find the place with coordinates -22.538042, -43.227932 in Google Maps, you will get Petrópolis as the city's name.
But when you use the same values in the "PN Local Search Tool" you will get a near place (by the rounded of values), but with a different city's name, even after moving the pin to the right place, and the city's name will still be reported as Duque de Caxias.
Thank you for your comment.
Thanks, Leuba Ridgway!
Hi Antonio, regarding your note about errors in map co-ordinates, we use Google maps for our mapping so have no control over any errors, and I am sure there are many, I see them all the time. If you type a name into the search box it will give an approximate location for that name. You can then manually drag and drop the pin to a more precise location, zooming in as necessary until you can get to within a few feet or less. In remote areas the accuracy may be a lot less.
If you have a functioning GPS attached to the camera PN will use that to position the pin accurately and the GPS data will appear above the map. The place names which appear are still dependent on the accuracy and skill of the programmer of the map which we have no control over. There are other more glaring errors which users in France and China see! Those 2 countries do not exist!
Thanks for sharing this lovely spotting !
Thank you, Jim Nelson!
Keep trying you will get a great photo.
Excellent spotting, summary and photos, Antonio! we have belted kingfishers where I live, and I am still trying to get a good photo of one.