Birds from the lens of a cricketer – 2

Continuing the series, I write to introduce two more birds in today’s post.

The two birds (Grey heron & Red Munia) covered earlier are happily residing in the post page here – Birds from the lens of a cricketer.

The two birds that I am covering here today – Spotted thick knee and Pied Kingfisher have their photo courtesy from Shashank and the below analysis is an outcome of my research and collation from Wikipedia and other relevant articles from bird enthusiasts.

1. Spotted thick knee –

This bird is largely a resident throughout Southern Africa and found in few parts of Asia. They are mainly found near bushes, fields and parks. These birds are found happy walking instead of flying but when they are in the mood to fly they flap their wings quite strong and roam about rapidly high up in the air and flock along either in a pair when moody or else in a group of around ten to twenty.

They carry arrow shaped brown heads on their neck, have large yellow eyes, short yellowish brown beak and grow up about 43 cm tall in length and weigh about 500 grams. Their chirp sounds pi pi pi & whee-yu-ee. In the daytime they are usually quiet, but as the sun sets and the darkness pull, they seem to get noisy becoming quite active.

For a living, they generally feed on grass seeds, termites, beetles, insects, small reptiles and rodents. They live up to about fifteen years.

2. Pied kingfisher –

This bird, unlike the colorful bird that we know of, is a black and white plumage bird. They grow up to about 25 cm long and have a weight of around 100 grams. They are generally found across Africa and Asia. They generally like staying in pairs or a small flock. They have a large head, small body and feet but do have a long black bill. They almost live up to 4 years on an average.

They are found hovering over clear lakes and rivers as they mainly feed on fish and having gifted with wide angle view which they use to quickly dive down vertically straight into the water body with their bill down to catch hold of its prey.

They are also known for their speed of flight wherein, they could rapidly fly with a flight of around 50 km/h. The Pied Kingfisher is a noisy bird and their chirp emits a high-pitched ‘chick-chick’. The bird is known to be the largest bird capable of a true hover in still air.