Species Fact Profile: Micronesian Kingfisher (Todiramphus cinnamomina)

Micronesian Kingfisher

Todiramphus cinnamomina (Swainson, 1821)

Range: Micronesia, Palau

Habitat: Forests, Woodlands, Mangrove Swamps

Diet: Insects, Lizards, Crustaceans

Social Grouping: Solitary or Paired

Lifespan: 10-12 Years, Maximum 20 (Captivity)

Reproduction: Both parents build the nest (usually in a tree cavity or termite nests), nesting season is December through July. Two eggs are incubated for 23 days. chicks are fed by both adults and fledge at 40 days.  Sexual maturity is reached at 3 years

Conservation Status: IUCN Extinct in the Wild (Guam subspecies)

• Body length 20-24 centimeters, weigh 55-85 grams
• Cinnamon brown plumage with a blue tail and metallic green-blue wings; males and females look alike,  except for the paler breast feathers in the female
• The kingfisher makes its first morning call at (almost) the same time every morning, so regularly that local people used it to tell time
• Often hunt from tree branches and other exposed perches, swooping down when they sight prey; prey is seized and then beaten against tree branches to kill it and (in vertebrate prey) break bones
• Thee subspecies - the nominate, from Guam, is the largest; the other two are T. c. reichenbachii (from Pohnpei) and T. c. pelewensis (the smallest, from Palau).  The now-extinct Ryukyu kingfisher (known from a single specimen) may also have been a subspecies of Micronesian kingfisher.  The living subspecies are sometimes described as separate species
• The Guam subspecies was driven to extinction in the wild following the introduction of the brown tree snake to the island; the last 29 birds in the wild were captured for captive breeding in the 1980's, and the species had vanished in the wild by 1988