Water Kingfishers
Cerylinae
The water kingfishers or Cerylinae are one of the three subfamilies of kingfishers, and are also known as the cerylid kingfishers. All six American species are in this subfamily.
These are all specialist fish-eating species, unlike many representatives of the other two subfamilies, and it is likely that they are all descended from fish-eating kingfishers which founded populations in the New World. It was believed that the entire group evolved in the Americas, but this seems not to be true. The original ancestor possibly evolved in Africa – at any rate in the Old World – and the Chloroceryle species are the youngest ones.
3 branches of this subfamily, most-observed first · about 9 known species
Large Crested Kingfishers
genusMegaceryle
American Green Kingfishers
genusChloroceryle
Ceryle
genusCeryle
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Cerylinae in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 1542374.