Birdwatching - 1709 🐦

🦉 The common kingfisher (Alcedo atthis)

📚 Alcedo alcedinis, alcyon, or halcedo, halcedinis (lat.) kingfisher; word "hals" in ancient Greek language meant "sea", along with the word thalassa. According to ancient Greek mythology Alcyone (Alcyone), the daughter of the wind god Eol, was the wife of Keix, who drowned due to the wrath of the gods. Alcyone, out of grief, threw herself into the sea, and also died. The gods had mercy and turned the spouses into kingfishers. Looking for her husband, Alcyone calls all the time “Keix! Keix!" and dives, trying to find him in the sea. Alcyone days - two weeks of calm weather around the day winter solstice. During these days, Eol pacified the winds so that Alcyone, in the form of a kingfisher, could hatch chicks in her nest floating on the waves.
📚 atthis (ancient Greek mythology) Attis, a divine youth of extraordinary beauty

As usual, I met these birds (and they were male and female) in the same place where I meet them every year. In a ravine by the river. And no wonder they love this place so much. Here, on the sides of the spring, there are sheer walls made of sand, clay, to be honest, I don’t understand this. In these crumbly walls, these birds dig holes in which they live.

And every spring, in the middle of May, I go to visit this couple. The female, as usual, can simply sit and wait for the male, who, after hunting (or rather fishing), brings her treats, observing the ritual of courtship.