Birdwatching - 3260🐦

🦉 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

In summer, these birds (like all birds) are busy feeding their young, so they are silent and try to remain secretive. However, I always manage to meet them and watch them hunt. They live (I mean the pair) in a ravine, where they dig burrows in the loose clay wall of the slope. They hunt nearby, in the river.

Near the river there's a small seasonal lake where these birds sometimes catch fish, which are few in number. But mostly they fly far away to where another river flows into the larger one, and there they also fish alongside the fishermen.