A spectrogram of a Belted Kingfisher making a “low rattle” and diving into the water to catch a fish.

Today’s highlighted recording is a Belted Kingfisher who’s gone fishing. And, it’s the perfect choice to also announce that I’ll be “Gone Fishing!” soon too, figuratively anyway, until mid-January when I return from a visit to the Galapagos islands.

But back to the Belted Kingfisher. This was recorded at Frazer’s Creek on the Schoodic Peninsula (Acadia National Park) at 6:15am, June 20, 2019, as the the tide was noisily rushing out of the cove under the Loop Road. The Belted Kingfisher sat quietly on the bridge railing for quite some time, and then as it called, it flew and hovered over shallow water before diving in and catching a fish. It took the fish back to the wooden railing, stabbed at it repeatedly with its beak, and ate it.

Belted Kingfisher “gone fishing”.