A white-throated kingfisher sits perched on a tree in Chennai, India.

The white-throated kingfisher is found all over the Southern part of Asia, from Turkey to the Philippines. It has four subspecies, with the one in the photograph most likely being H. c. fusca. I saw this bird perched in the trees, apparently trying to eat some small creature (probably either a lizard or a fish.) However, tree shots of birds are very hard to get, so the picture only shows the body of the bird and the beak as well.

Kingfishers are often thought of as small waterbirds that hunt fish, but this is far from the truth. Most kingfishers are hunters of many small creatures, including lizards, small mammals, and even some small birds! The White-throated Kingfisher is a predator of several small birds, including sparrows and munias (a kind of tropical Old World bird that resemble sparrows).

The Kingfishers used to be grouped all as one family: the Alcedinidae. However, now they are split into three families – the Alcedinidae (river kingfishers), Halcyonidae (tree kingfishers, the family the White-throated kingfisher belongs to), and Cerylidae (water kingfishers). The Alcedinidae includes the smaller species which mainly eat insects and small fish. The Halcyonidae is medium-sized, and these kingfishers are called tree kingfishers because they are most often found in dense tropical woodland or forest close to a body of water. The last group, the Cerylidae, includes the giant kingfishers, which prey on large aquatic and semi-aquatic animals, like crabs and frogs.