Banded Kingfisher

The banded kingfisher is a strongly patterned forest kingfisher whose sexes look strikingly different. Males have an electric-blue crown and back crossed by black barring, pale underparts finely barred dark and a bright red bill. Females are mainly rufous above with black barring, and show paler underparts patterned with dark crescents. Young birds resemble the adult of their sex but are duller and have a brown-and-orange bill. Its long, fading sequence of whistles carries through dense forest (Wikipedia, general species account, citing Woodall and Kirwan).

It occurs from Myanmar and Thailand through Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam to the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java and Borneo. Unlike fish-eating kingfishers, it inhabits lowland and foothill rainforest without needing open water. Birds watch quietly from shaded branches, then seize large insects and occasional small lizards in foliage or on the ground. The nest is excavated in a rotting tree trunk or sometimes a tree-termite mound, and the clutch contains two to five white eggs (Wikipedia, general species account, citing Robson and Birds of the World).