Birdwatching - 1747 🐦

🦉 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

These guys have two habitats. At the beginning of spring, in the middle of May, they spend all their time in a ravine with loose walls, where they dig holes, and there still flows a stream directly to the river, where they fish. And when their babies grow up, the family moves a couple of kilometers further, to the place where the small river flows into the big one.

In this place, youngsters learn to fish on their own. They sit in the bushes and watch how their parents do it. There, in the fast-flowing river, the fish are very clearly visible.