Nesting Kingfishers and Green-backed Herons

     Belted kingfishers and green-backed herons are adaptable, fish-eating bird species that nest along creeks and streams in farm country in southeastern Pennsylvania, as well as by other waterways and impoundments through much of North America.  Both species raise young along or near water and catch fish and other aquatic creatures to feed themselves and their offspring.  But they do so in different watery niches and in different ways, reducing competition for the same food and eliminating rivalry for nesting sites around the same bodies of water, the reason they can coexist.
     Kingfishers are blue-gray on top and white below with a shaggy crest on their heads.  Adult female belted kingfishers have a chestnut strip across their chests, while males and young don't have that feature. 
     Green backed herons are dull-green on top and chestnut below, with yellowish legs and feet.  Young green-backs are beige-striped as well as chestnut underneath.
     Each pair of kingfishers digs a burrow into the top of a soil stream bank caused by erosion from the running water over a long period of time.  The tunnel extends straight back a few feet where the female lays up to six or seven eggs at the end of it. 
     A pair of green herons builds a stick platform among the twigs high in a tree overhanging or near a body of water.  There the female lays four or five eggs. 
     Both the young herons and kingfishers leave their nurseries during the beginning of July and spend the rest of the summer developing fishing skills and preparing to be adults.  I have watched the parent birds of both species teaching their offspring to get their own food from the water.  The parents feed their young for a short time after fledging their nests.  And those youngsters learn fishing techniques by watching their parents' catching prey.
     Belted kingfishers, like all their relatives, have two ways of snaring fish in the middle of waterways and impoundments.  One technique is to perch on a tree limb over the water and drop into the water beak-first to catch a fish in their long, stout bills.  The other method is to hover into the wind on rapidly beating wings, then dropping into the water, again beak-first.
     Green herons wade in the shallows along the edges of waterways and impoundments to seize, small fish, frogs, tadpoles, crayfish and other aquatic critters in their lengthy bills.  By fishing the shallows the herons do not compete with the kingfishers for food. 
     A few kingfishers stay north in winter, if there is open water to fish from.  But the green herons go south for the winter, returning to the north to breed by early April. 
     Watch for these two adaptable, fish-catching birds along streams in southeastern Pennsylvania farmland.  They are interesting species that are common in their chosen habitat where competition between them is at a minimum.