Abstract
The diet of Common Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) was evaluated using the data from studies available on Web of ScienceTM Core Collection (WoS), from foreign studies out of WoS and via analysis of photographs available on Google.com. A special attention has been paid to a non-fish prey (occurrence and proportion in the diet, species spectrum, habitat of presence, size).
Non-fish prey comprised 4.6% of the diet of kingfisher according to studies available on WoS, 13.6% according to foreign studies out of WoS and 11.6% according to photos on Google.com (gross average 9.9%; Fig. 1). Apart from fish, the prey was dominated by frogs (Anura; Fig. 2), newts (Triturus sp.), dragonfly larvae (Anisoptera), crayfishes (Astacidae) and tadpoles (Fig. 3, 4).
According to Google.com photos, fish were mostly hunted by adult kingfishers (46.8% by male, 28.2% by female; Fig. 6) and sporadically by young bird (25.0%). In contrast, non-fish prey was mostly hunted by young kingfisher (51.1%; Fig. 4, 7), then by female (26.1%) and male (22.8%).
In degraded ecosystems where marshes and oxbow lakes are absent and occurrence of aquatic insect, crayfishes, newts, frogs and tadpoles is heavily suppressed by abundant fish populations, fish represents the dominant or even exclusive diet of Common Kingfisher.