Herons and kingfishers are both long-billed birds that will stand in one spot and watch for fish to capture. Yet, they have apparently adopted different fishing strategies, and this makes one easy to observe and the other difficult.
A heron’s strategy seems to be to wait for a fish to come to it—it is the model of patience. A kingfisher’s strategy seems to be to actively search for fish—if it sees nothing at one place, it quickly looks elsewhere.
This morning a male Belted Kingfisher stayed in one spot long enough for a picture, but not much longer.
