Birdwatching - 1774 🐦

🦉 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

As always, I met these two guys, a male and a female, in their favorite place - in a ravine in which a stream flows, with sandy walls. In these walls they dig holes. They arrive late, in mid-May. And they immediately begin mating games, the male courts his female, he catches and brings her fish that he catches in the river nearby.

Every time they have offspring, and when the children grow up, they like to educate them in one place, where a fast small river flows into a large one. Or on a temporary seasonal lake.