Birdwatching - 1879 🐦(+Video)

🦉 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

Every year in the same place, around the beginning of May, I meet these stunning birds. As always, there are two of them, a male and a female. And I don’t know for sure whether it’s the same birds who fly here every year, or others, or whether this place is passed down to them by inheritance and whole generations fly here.

They build a place for future nesting on clay landslides of the plain and dig holes. And when the nestlings grow up and leave the hole, this entire family can be observed near a temporary seasonal lake where they fish. Or further, where a fast-flowing river flows into a large one, there is their favorite place.