Kingfishers

I have a friend who was born and raised on Guam and on one of his first trips to Saipan I had taken him sightseeing and let him drive. We were driving down the back road heading to Kagman when all of a sudden he slammed on the breaks and yelled, "Oh my god, did you see that"...I was in shock and was wondering what was going on..I began looking around at the road and off to the sides thinking we had hit a dog or something. I turned to him and was like, "what? what? what is it? we can't just stop in the middle of the road like this?"..to my surprise he began to back up the car...ON THE MAIN ROAD mind you...Of course, I went into panic mode and started yelling, "what are you doing????" (thank GOD there were no other cars behind us that day). He backed up a few feet and then pointed up to a power line, "look at that!" So I look up to see a kingfisher sitting on the wire. I was like, " whats the big deal?? You almost killed us for a bird???" He was still freaking out as if he had just seen Jesus walking on water..I said, "hellooooooooo! Its a kingfisher...a bird...whats so amazing about that????? Are you ok????" He looked at me with this look like I was the crazy one..and he said, "you don't understand, we don't have birds on Guam. It's amazing to see a bird that beautiful just sitting there. I can believe it! This is the first time I have ever seen a Kingfisher!" And he just sat there for what seemed like the longest time (it was probably only about 5 minutes) stopped in the middle of the road, looking up a the kingfisher on the wire...And I sat there watching him and thought to myself, wow I see Kingfishers everyday and I take that for granted... how blessed we are to live on this beautiful snake free island!

Kingfishers really are beautiful birds! I was reminded of the incident with my friend when I opened up my door this morning to leave to work and saw two Kingfishers sitting on a branch on the other side of my lawn....

I tried to catch a picture of them together but I was too far away :(

When I got close enough to take a good shot, one flew away just as I was taking it.

The closest I have ever come to one was when I found an injured bird at the 4th of July carnival. It was so upsetting to find him/her with it's wing injured. I have no idea what may have happened to it. Perhaps it flew into a wire or a pole or into one of the carnival booths. I called my friend's husband who owns several birds to come and pick it up to see if he could save it...I'm not sure if he was able to since I haven't spoken with him lately...I probably don't want to know...

Since that incident with my friend I try not to take the fact that we are so lucky to live in the presence of such beautiful birds for granted. So next time you see a kingfisher sitting on a wire above the road, don't slam on your brakes, but do take a second to look at it and Thank God!