Wildlife : Birdwatching - 1580 🐦

🦉 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

I love these guys! It is a real pleasure to admire these amazing birds! Every year in the same place I see them all the time. There is a ravine with loose clay landslides, and a small stream of a spring flows.

In these landslides they dig holes year after year. Here is a photo of their burrow in 2020.
During the mating season, they spend almost all the time in this place. More precisely, most of the time, especially the female. And the male flies out of this place to the river which is close. He flies out to hunt, and then brings the freshly caught fish to the female.