Megaceryle is a genus of very large kingfisher

Kingfisher

Kingfishers are a group of small to medium sized brightly coloured birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species being found in the Old World and Australia...

s. It comprises four species:

• Giant Kingfisher
  Giant Kingfisher
  The Giant Kingfisher is the largest kingfisher in Africa, where it is a resident breeding bird over most of the continent south of the Sahara Desert other than the arid southwest....
  
  , Megaceryle maxima
• Crested Kingfisher
  Crested Kingfisher
  The Crested Kingfisher Megaceryle lugubris is resident of the Himalayas and foothills of Northern India, Bangladesh, northern Indochina, Southeast Asia and Japan. It is a very large black and white kingfisher with evenly barred wings and tail. It lacks a supercilium and has a spotted breast, which...
  
  , Megaceryle lugubris
• Belted Kingfisher
  Belted Kingfisher
  The Belted Kingfisher is a large, conspicuous water kingfisher, the only member of that group commonly found in the northern United States and Canada. It is depicted on the 1986 series Canadian $5 note. All kingfishers were formerly placed in one family, Alcedinidae, but recent research suggests...
  
  , Megaceryle alcyon
• Ringed Kingfisher
  Ringed Kingfisher
  The Ringed Kingfisher is a large, conspicuous and noisy kingfisher, commonly found along the lower Rio Grande River valley in southeasternmost Texas in the United States through Central America to Tierra del Fuego in South America....
  
  , Megaceryle torquata

All are specialist fish-eaters with prominent stiff crests on their heads. They have dark grey or bluish-grey upperparts, largely unmarked in the two American

Americas

The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

 species, but heavily spotted with white in the Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

n Crested Kingfisher

Crested Kingfisher

The Crested Kingfisher Megaceryle lugubris is resident of the Himalayas and foothills of Northern India, Bangladesh, northern Indochina, Southeast Asia and Japan. It is a very large black and white kingfisher with evenly barred wings and tail. It lacks a supercilium and has a spotted breast, which...

 and the Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

n Giant Kingfisher

Giant Kingfisher

The Giant Kingfisher is the largest kingfisher in Africa, where it is a resident breeding bird over most of the continent south of the Sahara Desert other than the arid southwest....

. The underparts may be white or rufous, and all forms have a contrasting breast band except male Ringed Kingfisher

Ringed Kingfisher

The Ringed Kingfisher is a large, conspicuous and noisy kingfisher, commonly found along the lower Rio Grande River valley in southeasternmost Texas in the United States through Central America to Tierra del Fuego in South America....

. The underpart pattern is always different for the two sexes of each species.

These birds nest in horizontal tunnels made in a river bank or sand bank. Both parents excavate the tunnel, incubate the eggs and feed the young.

Megaceryle kingfishers are often seen perched prominently on trees, posts, or other suitable watch-points close to water before plunging in head first after their prey, usually fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

, crustacean

Crustacean

Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...

s or frog

Frog

Frogs are amphibians in the order Anura , formerly referred to as Salientia . Most frogs are characterized by a short body, webbed digits , protruding eyes and the absence of a tail...

s, but sometimes aquatic insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s and other suitably sized animals.

Origins and taxonomy

The previous view that the Megaceryle kingfishers arose in the New World

New World

The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...

 from a specialist fish-eating Alcedinid ancestor which crossed the Bering Strait

Bering Strait

The Bering Strait , known to natives as Imakpik, is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, the easternmost point of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, USA, the westernmost point of the North American continent, with latitude of about 65°40'N,...

 and gave rise to this genus and the American green kingfisher

American green kingfisher

The American green kingfishers are the Chloroceryle genus of kingfishers, which are native to tropical Central and South America, with one species extending north to south Texas.They comprise four species:...

s Chloroceryle, with a large crested species later, in the Pliocene

Pliocene

The Pliocene Epoch is the period in the geologic timescale that extends from 5.332 million to 2.588 million years before present. It is the second and youngest epoch of the Neogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The Pliocene follows the Miocene Epoch and is followed by the Pleistocene Epoch...

, crossing the Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

 to give rise to the Giant and Crested Kingfishers (Fry & Fry, 2000) is probably wrong. Rather, it now seems that the genus probably originates in the Old World, possibly Africa, and the ancestor of the Belted and Ringed Kingfishers made the ocean crossing (Moyle, 2006).

The Megaceryle kingfishers were formerly placed in Ceryle with the Pied Kingfisher

Pied Kingfisher

The Pied Kingfisher is a water kingfisher and is found widely distributed across Africa and Asia. Their black and white plumage, crest and the habit of hovering over clear lakes and rivers before diving for fish makes it distinctive. Males have a double band across the breast while females have a...

, but the latter is genetically closer to the American green kingfishers.