Sombre Kingfisher Todiramphus funebris Scientific name definitions

30 cm. Medium-sized kingfisher with stout bill . Male has white supraloral spot, supercilium and collar, dark olive-green or black upperparts  , green-blue rump, white underparts  ; upper mandible black, lower mandible dark distally and on cutting edges with yellowish-horn base; iris dark brown; legs and feet black. Female duller and much browner . Juvenile even duller, lacking olive wash, has dark edges to white feathers of collar and breast, white-tipped bill.

N Moluccas (Halmahera); previously listed also for Ternate, but data unconfirmed (1 Collar, N. J., A. V. Andreev, S. Chan, M. J. Crosby, S. Subramanya, and J. A. Tobias, Editors (2001). Threatened Birds of Asia: the BirdLife International Red Data Book. BirdLife International, Cambridge, UK. Close ).

Swamp-forest (sago palm), tall secondary woodland, forest edge, mangroves, and occasionally gardens, cultivated lowlands and coconut plantations; coastal lowlands to 620 m, mostly below 100 m.

Probably sedentary.

Large arthropods, including grasshoppers (Orthoptera) and centipedes (Chilopoda), also snakes and lizards . Perches for long periods on a shady branch in the middle level of trees, scanning clearings, before swooping to the ground for prey.

Slow  , distinctive “ki...ki...ki...ki”; also 3 loud, descending, maniacal-sounding notes for 1·5 seconds, repeated at 5-second intervals, another bird may reply with loud, repeated nasal disyllabic upslur at 1 per second.

An active nest , found in Sep 2014, was in an arboreal termitarium  placed on a Pandanus tree, about 5 m high. No other information available.

VULNERABLE. Restricted-range species: present in Northern Maluku EBA. Uncommon, local and little known. Encounter rates on censuses have been too low to permit extrapolation of population size, but density estimates for congeners suggest a population of fewer than 10,000 mature individuals BirdLife International (2016) Species factsheet: Todiramphus funebris. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 21/07/2016. . Small population declining as a result of increasing loss and degradation of habitat . Destruction and fragmentation of forest has accelerated since early 1990s; commercial exploitation of valuable trees now widespread and heavy, and most of the remaining forest is now under timber concession. Habitat under further pressure from increased settlement and transmigration, with land-use changes such as conversion to agriculture, plantations, and irrigation schemes; also from mineral extraction and fuelwood-gathering. As this species seems clearly to prefer low elevations, such threats are especially worrying. Previously considered Near Threatened, it was uplisted to Vulnerable in 2000. Nominally protected under Indonesian law since 1931 (1 Collar, N. J., A. V. Andreev, S. Chan, M. J. Crosby, S. Subramanya, and J. A. Tobias, Editors (2001). Threatened Birds of Asia: the BirdLife International Red Data Book. BirdLife International, Cambridge, UK. Close ), it occurs within recently-created Aketajawe-Lolobata National Park (IUCN Cat. II; 1673 km²). More information on its biology is needed, particularly its dependence on intact primary forest.