Hunting Behavior and Feeding Success of Three Sympatric Kingfishers’ Species in Two Adjacent Wetlands in Southwestern India

We studied the foraging patterns of three kingfishers’ species, White Throated Kingfisher (Halcyon smyrnensis), Small Blue Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) and Lesser Pied Kingfisher (Ceryle rudis); hereafter stated as WTK, SBK, LPK respectively; from December 2015 to September 2016. This work was carried out in the two wetlands located at Mavoor (N 11° 15′ 73.3″ and E 75° 55′ 94.4″) and Vazhakkad (N 11° 14′ 66.0″ and E 75° 56′ 81.2″), Kerala in southwestern India. We examined the association of foraging behavior and hunting technique with study sites, seasons and kingfishers’ species, and we investigated the variation of feeding success rate over species, sites, seasons, distance-to-water and used hunting technique. The feeding behavior of the three species dominated in both the sites, while resting and flying behaviors were observed more in Mavoor. All species spent more time in feeding than at rest or in flight with LPK and WTK being the most and the least active species respectively. During breeding and post-migration seasons kingfishers increased feeding behavior at the expense of resting and flying behaviors. The LPK mainly hunted using hover-plunge while the two other species, particularly WTK, adopted more the perch-plunge technique. The feeding success rate varied significantly between kingfishers species: highest in WTK and lowest in LPK.