The Story
I made this photo of an Amazon Kingfisher (Chloroceryle amazona) at Ecohotel La Fortuna in Yopal, Casanare, Colombia. It usually hunts from a perch, diving into the water from about 1 to 1.5 meters up. Its diet is mostly fish, especially characins, along with crustaceans. Both members of a pair dig the nest burrow in a riverbank, up to about 1.6 meters long with a chamber at the end. The female does most of the incubating at night and the male during the day. Yopal is the capital of Casanare.
I used a Pentax K-1 with the HD Pentax-D FA 150-450mm f/4.5-5.6 for this one, at 1/2500 sec, f/7.1, ISO 800. IUCN lists the Amazon Kingfisher as Least Concern, with a decreasing population.
©2019 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Amazon Kingfisher (Chloroceryle amazona) 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