Giant Kingfisher (Megaceryle maxima)
About the Giant Kingfisher
The giant kingfisher (Megaceryle maxima) is the largest kingfisher in Africa, where it is a resident breeding bird over most of the continent south of the Sahara Desert, other than the arid southwest. The first formal description of the giant kingfisher was by the German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas in 1769 under the binomial name Alcedo maxima. The current genus Megaceryle was erected by the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup in 1848. There are two subspecies: M. m. maxima (Pallas, 1769) – Senegal and Gambia to Ethiopia and south to South Africa M. m. gigantea (Swainson, 1837) – Liberia to northern Angola and western Tanzania, island of Bioko The nominate subspecies M. m. maxima occurs in wooded savanna while M. m. gigantea prefers tropical rainforest.
No audio on this page yet
We only publish recordings we may use commercially, because this site is supported by ads. xeno-canto lists 38 recordings for this species: 3 CC BY-NC-ND. None of them permits commercial use, so there is no player here — the page is kept as a profile so the bird is not missing from the guide.
As soon as someone uploads a freely licensed recording, we mirror it and the player appears here.
Listed as recorded in Botswana, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya in the xeno-canto catalogue.
Related species you can hear
- Belted KingfisherMegaceryle alcyonrecording
- Ringed KingfisherMegaceryle torquatarecording
This species has no recording here yet — these relatives do, so you can hear what the family sounds like.