Seeing a kingfisher
Seeing a kingfisher recalls the old Greek idea of halcyon days. Its nearly splashless dive also helped a birdwatching engineer in Japan tame a noisy bullet train, an answer found far from his desk.
What it may mean
A kingfisher's dive is over in a blink: a drop from the perch, barely a splash, and the bird is often back up with a fish. That clean entry caught the eye of Eiji Nakatsu, a Japanese railway engineer and keen birdwatcher. In the 1990s his company's new bullet train boomed loudly each time it burst out of a tunnel, and he reasoned that a bird passing from air into water had already solved a similar problem. A long nose shaped like the kingfisher's bill tamed the boom and made the train cheaper to run. The answer came from his weekends, not his desk. Most people carry knowledge from a hobby, a childhood farm or a summer job that never gets asked to help with their main work. When a kingfisher drops into a creek, you might ask which of your side interests could solve a problem somewhere else.
Depending on how you saw it
A kingfisher diving into the water
A kingfisher waits on a perch or hovers in place, then drops headfirst into the water and comes up with a small fish, which it often beats against a perch. Most of the hunt is waiting. What do you watch patiently before you commit to it?
Hearing its rattle before you see it
The belted kingfisher's loud, dry rattle often announces it long before the blue-gray bird flashes past. People who know the call look up in time. Who in your life do you hear long before you see them?
A female with a rusty band
Female belted kingfishers carry an extra chestnut band across the belly, making them more colorful than the males, which is rare among North American birds. The showier one is not the one you might expect. Where do you assume the bolder role belongs to someone else?
A kingfisher in winter
Kingfishers stay as far north as they can find open water, fishing at springs, rapids and outflows that do not freeze. They follow the water that stays open. What keeps you going when your usual sources freeze over?
Why it happens in nature
Kingfishers hunt by watching from a perch or hovering, then diving headfirst to catch small fish. North America's belted kingfisher nests in burrows dug into riverbanks, gives a loud rattling call, and is one of the few birds in which the female is more brightly colored than the male.
What folk beliefs say
Ancient Greece
The ancients, a 1903 collection says, believed that as long as the female kingfisher sat on its eggs, no storm or tempest would cross the ocean.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 654. View the page
France
In France, the kingfisher was taken as an omen of harmony in families, and was said to make beautiful the women who wore its feathers.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 654. View the page
Sicily
Willsford, a 1658 English writer quoted by Brand, said the halcyon breeding time foreshows quiet weather, as observed about the coast of Sicily, from which the proverb of the halcyon days came.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (1849), vol. 3, p. 222. View the page
Siberia (Ostyaks)
The Ostyaks of Siberia kept the skin, bill and claws of a kingfisher shut in a purse, believing that while they kept this amulet they had no harm to fear.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 654. View the page
India (Hindu tradition)
In Hindu omen lore recorded in 1903, seeing or hearing a kingfisher, or even hearing its name, foretold a gain of wealth.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 569. View the page
Makah (Pacific Northwest)
According to the Makah of the Pacific Northwest, the kingfisher was a great fisherman but also a thief, and the ring of white feathers about its neck is the shell necklace it stole.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 685. View the page
To reflect on
Which of your side interests might hold the answer to a problem somewhere else in your life?