Research - Kingfisher

Kingfishers are often found in mangrove areas.

The New Zealand kingfisher (Halcyon sancta vagans), also known as the 'sacred kingfisher'.
The New Zealand sub-species, vagans, has distinctive green and blue colours.
Halcyon is the Greek word for kingfisher and refers to a bird fabled to breed about the time of the winter solstice in a nest floating on the sea and to charm the wind and waves so that the sea was then specially calm, hence halcyon days. The specific name of sanctus, the Sacred Kingfisher, was, according to the ornithologist W.H. Oliver, given as far back as 1782 because of the veneration associated with this bird in some Pacific Islands.

The Maori never used the feathers of Kotare but they were eaten, perhaps because they eat lizards which are regarded as guardians of the mauri of the forest.

This is the only native kingfisher species found in New Zealand. Another kingfisher, the Australian kookaburra, was introduced and lives around Auckland.
Maori name = kōtare

In order to make their nests in banks or trees/bark, a pair will take turns to fly at the bank like torpedoes; their skulls are brilliantly structured to absorb the shock.

 Anne Salmond’s “The Trial of the Cannibal Dog” - in this, a Kingfisher approved (as a god in the bird’s form), human sacrifice in the 18th Century South Pacific. After human sacrifice, a kingfisher cried out in the trees around the marae, Tu seemed pleased, remarking to Cook, ‘That’s the Atua [god] speaking.’”