The Story
I photographed this Green Kingfisher (Chloroceryle americana) at Playa El Diablo, near La Macarena, Meta, Colombia, in February 2021. It is found from southern Texas through Central America and in every mainland South American country except Chile. Both sexes have green upperparts with two or more rows of white spots on the flight feathers. It favors still or slow-moving water with low perches for hunting, and both members of a pair dig the nest burrow, almost always in an earthen bank of a stream or river. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I made this frame with a Canon R5 and the RF 800mm f/11 plus the RF 1.4x extender, at 1/500 sec, f/16, ISO 6400. Birds recorded in the La Macarena reserve up to 1978 already numbered 456 species, about 27 percent of all the birds of Colombia.
©2021 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Green Kingfisher (Chloroceryle americana) belongs to the family Alcedinidae (Kingfishers) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2020), with the population trend listed as decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List
