Kingfisher

The kingfisher fishes from a low branch over slow rivers and ponds, plunging in head first for small fish. Most people only ever see it as a blue streak flying low over the water.

Its blue is not pigment. It comes from the structure of the feathers, which scatter blue light, so the colour shifts as the bird turns. It nests at the end of a tunnel it digs into a river bank.

Based on plate 10, volume 2 of John Gould's The Birds of Great Britain.