American Pygmy Kingfisher

The American pygmy kingfisher is about 13 cm (5.1 in) long. Males weigh 10 to 16 g (0.35 to 0.56 oz) and females 12 to 16 g (0.42 to 0.56 oz). It has the typical kingfisher shape, with a shaggy crest and long heavy bill. The bill is black with some pale yellow at the base of the mandible and its legs and feet are pinkish to light gray. Males of the nominate subspecies have a dark glossy green head and upperparts with a golden wash separated by a narrow rufous collar. Their tail is a bluer green. They have black lores with a thin rufous line in front of the eye. Their chin, throat, and most of their underparts are rufous that is deeper on the breast and flanks. The center of their breast and their undertail coverts are white. Adult females are similar with the addition of a dark green band across their upper breast. Juveniles have paler underparts than adults and buffy spots on their wings; males have green-black streaks on their breast and females' breast band is often incomplete. Subspecies C. a. stictoptera has obvious lines of white spots on their secondaries and some white on the rump. The two forms intergrade in central Costa Rica.

Subspecies C. a. stictoptera of American pygmy kingfisher is the more northerly of the two. It is found from the southern Mexican states of Puebla, Veracruz, Yucatán, and Chiapas south through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua to central Costa Rica. The nominate subspecies is found from central Costa Rica (where it overlaps stictoptera) through Panama into Colombia. From there it occurs west of the Andes to central Ecuador and east and south into Venezuela, the Guianas, and most of Amazonian Colombia, Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia. Its range extends slightly into Paraguay and Argentina and also includes Trinidad. The American pygmy kingfisher inhabits dense forest, where it occurs along small streams and rivers, beside pools, in swamps, and along tidal channels in mangroves. It shuns open landscapes. In elevation it ranges from sea level to 2,600 m (8,500 ft).

The American pygmy kingfisher hunts from a low perch from which it dives into water for its prey. Its diet includes small fish such as those of families Characidae and Cyprinodontidae, tadpoles and frogs, and large insects such as damselflies. It has been reported but not confirmed that it catches insects on the wing.