Sacred Kingfisher

About the Sacred Kingfisher

The sacred kingfisher (Todiramphus sanctus) is a medium-sized woodland kingfisher that occurs in mangroves, woodlands, forests and river valleys in Australia, New Zealand and other parts of the western Pacific. The binomial name Halcyon sanctus was introduced by Nicholas Aylward Vigors and Thomas Horsfield in 1827 who described a sacred kingfisher zoological specimen from New Holland, Australia. Vigors and Horsfield compare it with Alcedo sacra described by Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1788. Gmelin in turn based his description on John Latham's "Sacred King's Fisher" published in 1782. Latham described several varieties, one of which was illustrated in Arthur Phillip's The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay published in 1789. The genus Halcyon was split and the sacred kingfisher was placed in the genus Todiramphus that had been erected by the French surgeon and naturalist René Lesson in 1827. The generic name is derived from the genus Todus (Brisson, 1760), 'tody' (a West Indian insectivorous bird) and Ancient Greek rhamphos (ῥάμφος), 'bill'. The specific epithet is the Latin sanctus 'sacred'.

Five subspecies are recognised: T. s. sanctus (Vigors & Horsfield, 1827... Wikipedia →