Trogons and Kingfishers

WARD'S TROGON Harpactes wardi (Kinnear)
Size Pigeon; with longer tail. Overall length 40 cm (16 in.).
Field Characters A brilliantly coloured rather sluggish forest bird, similar to Redheaded Trogon but larger. Belly crimson-pink in male; primorse-yellow in female. Tail graduated, the feathers squarely truncated at tip. Central rectrices black; lateral ones--pink in male, yellow in female--conspicous in flight in shady forest.
Status, Habitat, etc. Resident in the eastern Himalayas between 1500 and 3000 m, from central Bhutan eastward: lower storey and evergreen undergrowth and bamboo in subtropical forest. Singly or separated pairs.
Food: large insects and berries.
Call: one described as ' a soft kew-kew-kew-tree uttered at intervals'. Usually silent.

HIMALAYAN PIED KINGFISHER Ceryl lugubris (Temmink)
Size House Crow; length 40 cm (16 in.).
Field Characters A large, crested, black-and-white kingfisher with cross barred upperparts; a broad white nuchal collar. Wings and tail blackish grey barred and spotted with white. Below, white. A broad breast-band of black and rufous-brown spots. Flanks and under tail-coverts barred with blackish. In bright sunlight looks dark bluish grey-and-white rather than black-and-white. Female similar but with pale rust-coloured underwing, clearly diagnostic in flight.
Status, Habitat,etc. Resident throughout the Himalayan terai, duars and foothills, and locally up to 2000 m. (Paler subspecies continentalis from Kashmir to Sikkim and W. Bhutan; darker guttulata thence eastward through Arunachal Pardesh.) Affects rocky streams and torrents in the foothills. Pairs perch upright on rocks in a favourite beat of river day after day, bobbing head, erecting crest and jerking tail cocked from time to time. Usually plunges at oblique angle to seize prey near surface, not diving vertically from hovering stance in air like its smaller lowland congener. Flight stately, with deliberate wing beats, close over water.
Food: fish.
Call: an occasional single sharp click. Rarely also a loud harsh grating sound, rapidly repeated.

INDIAN PIED KINGFISHER Ceryle rudis (Linnaeus)
Size Myna+; length 30 cm (12 in.).
Field Characters A speckled and barred black-and-white kingfisher with typical stout dagger-shaped (black) bill. Unmistakable from its spectacular habit of hovering stationary in mid-air and plunging vertically for aquatic prey. Sexes almost alike, but male has a double black breast-band, female only a single.
Status, Habitat, etc. Resident in the duars and lowlands, seldom above 500 m: jheels, irrigation reservoirs, canals, streams, etc. Keeps singly or in pairs, perched on a rock or stake in water, flicking up tail and bobbing, or 'pumping', its head from time to time. Best known for its spectacular mode of hunting. Flies along a few metres above water, bill pointing downward, scanning below for fish near the surface. Checks itself abruptly now and again to investigate closely, 'standing on its tail', poised upright in mid-air on rapidly fluttering wings. Hurles itself headlong upon the quarry, vanishing below the surface soon to reappear with a struggling fish gripped between the mandibles.

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