Its black and white plumage and crest, as well as its habit of hovering over clear lakes and rivers before diving for fish, make it distinctive.

The pied kingfisher was one of the many bird species originally described by Linnaeus in the landmark 1758 10th edition of his Systema Naturae, who noted that it lived in Persia and Egypt.

[3] The name is from classical Greek kērulos, an unidentified and probably mythical bird mentioned by Aristotle and other authors.

Molecular analysis shows it is an early offshoot of the lineage that gave rise to American kingfishers of the genus Chloroceryle.

[8] Subspecies leucomelanura is found from Afghanistan east into India, Thailand and Southeast Asia.

[13] In India it is distributed mainly on the plains and is replaced in the higher hills of the Himalayas by the crested kingfisher (Megaceryle lugubris).

[13] When perched the pied kingfisher often bobs its heads up and down and will sometimes raise its tail and flick it downwards.

[16] This kingfisher feeds mainly on fish, although it will take crustaceans and large aquatic insects such as dragonfly larvae.

[17] It usually hunts by hovering over the water to detect prey, before diving vertically bill-first to capture fish.

[18] In Lake Victoria in East Africa, the introduction of the Nile perch reduced the availability of haplochromine cichlids which were formerly the preferred prey of these birds.