Backyard and Beyond

I can’t believe there are still fish in the Dell and Crescent Waters, since this male Belted Kingfisher has been around all winter dipping into the stock here.

Here he has a goldfish. Usually they just scarf their prey down PDQ, flipping it so it’s head first and then sluuuurrrppppp! This bird, however, just chortled and rattled from tree to tree, carrying the fish with him.
He was up pretty high in a tree here. And he dropped the fish. What?
About 12 seconds after my last shot of fish-in-bill, I caught this image of the Kingfisher in the act of spitting up a pellet! I guess he couldn’t have the external thing meeting the internal thing half-way, so the fish had be sacrificed to get that bundle of scales and tiny fish bones out of the gullet…
I was chatting with a passerby for a few minutes, so didn’t find this before the fleshfly was on the job already.