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Halcyon kingfishers are mostly large birds with heavy bills. They occur in a variety of habitats, with woodland of various types the preferred environment for most. They are “sit and wait” predators of small ground animals including large insects, rodents, snakes, and frogs, but some will also take fish.
Halcyon leucocephala ( Statius Müller , 1776) The grey-headed kingfisher ( Halcyon leucocephala ) is a species of kingfisher that has a wide distribution from the Cape Verde Islands off the north-west coast of Africa to Mauritania , Senegal and Gambia , east to Ethiopia , Somalia and southern Arabia and south to South Africa .
The genus Ceyx (within the river kingfishers family) is named after him. The kingfisher subfamily Halcyoninae (tree kingfishers) is named after his wife, as is the genus Halcyon. The belted kingfisher's specific name (Megaceryle alcyon) also references her name. Not all the kingfishers are named in this way.
The mangrove kingfisher (Halcyon senegaloides) is a kingfisher in the genus Halcyon. It is similar in appearance to the woodland kingfisher . It is found along the eastern coastline of Sub-Saharan Africa , living in woodland, along rivers, and in estuaries and mangrove.
The current genus Halcyon was introduced by the English naturalist and artist William Swainson in 1821, with the woodland kingfisher as the type species. [4] Three subspecies are recognised: [5] H. s. fuscopileus Reichenow, 1906 – Sierra Leone to south Nigeria and south to DR Congo and north Angola
The genus name Halcyon comes from a bird in Greek legend generally associated with the kingfisher. There was an ancient belief that the halcyon nested on the sea, which it calmed in order to lay its eggs on a floating nest. [5] The species' name chelicuti derives from Chelicut in Ethiopia, the location at which Stanley's type specimen was ...
[4] [5] The present genus Halcyon was introduced by the English naturalist and artist William Swainson in 1821. [6] Halcyon is a name for a bird in Greek mythology generally associated with the kingfisher. The specific epithet smyrnensis is an adjective for the city of Smyrna (now İzmir in Turkey). [7] Five subspecies are recognised: [8]
The genus Halcyon was split and the sacred kingfisher was placed in the genus Todiramphus that had been erected by the French surgeon and naturalist René Lesson in 1827. [6] The generic name is derived from the genus Todus (Brisson, 1760), 'tody' (a West Indian insectivorous bird) and Ancient Greek rhamphos (ῥάμφος), 'bill'.