A rare treat! This morning I saw two Sacred Kingfishers resting on a clump of dry bush at the edge of Manly Dam. I’ve seen a kingfisher at Manly Dam twice before, both near the dam wall. These two were in a different area, at an inlet on the north west side of the dam.

Before I saw the birds, I’d heard their call, though I didn’t know what it was at the time. It was a fairly high-pitched, insistent sound, uttered in groups of two to four squawks: “kik-kik-kik-kik”.

I think the one on the left might be male, and the one slightly higher up on the right might be female. Females have more green and less blue on their wings than the males do.

Kingfishers are related to kookaburras. (See my earlier posts for pictures of kookaburras.) But whereas Laughing Kookaburras are quite large (47 centimetres from head to tail), Sacred Kingfishers measure only 20 centimetres.

For comparison, here’s a kookaburra from another day:

Back to today’s Sacred Kingfishers: At one stage, both birds turned round to show me the backs of their heads. They look much more like colourful kookaburras now:

The next picture shows the bank of the dam where the birds were sitting. I was on the far side of the inlet. You might just be able to make out one of the kingfishers on the clump of dead bush towards the middle left of the picture. The other kingfisher had been chased away by a Willy Wagtail!

Common name: Sacred Kingfisher
Scientific name: Todiramphus sanctus
Approximate length: 20 cm
Date spotted: Saturday 14 October 2023 (spring)
Location: Manly Dam Park, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’34.4″S 151°14’48.9″E