Encounters with the Common Kingfisher

The Common Kingfisher is, in my opinion, anything but common! I see its cousin, the White Throated Kingfisher, almost all the time, at home, as well as on my travels, but it took me a trip to the Satpura National Park to see the Common Kingfisher for the very first time! And then again, we didnt see it in the sanctuary, but spotted it while waiting for a boat to take us there! 

The Common Kingfisher is also called the Eurasian Kingfisher, or a River Kingfisher. I only understood the significance of the name on my visit to the Buxa Tiger Reserve in West Bengal when, once again, I saw the bird while waiting by the river for a boat!!! I wasn't able to click a decent photo  though, thanks to my loud fellow tourists, but seeing the bird once seemed to have turned the luck, for I saw it once again at the Baranawapara Wildlife Sanctuary, during my trip to Sirpur in Chhattisgarh. The first spotting was when Mridula and I were driving to the Tourist Resort in the sanctuary...

Later, at the resort, we spent a pleasant couple of hours sitting by the side of the river which flows past the property, watching the bird sit patiently on the fence, diving at just the right time to pluck out a fish from the water. Sitting idly by, we even wondered just how many fish it would need to eat, to fill its tiny belly! 

All these years, when people told me about all the times they had spotted the Common Kingfisher, I wondered why the bird eluded me. Now that I have had all these encounters with the bird, I can tell them my own stories too!!!