There! A Kingfisher!

The first animal I ever saw in the rainforest

Madagascar Pygmy Kingfisher (Corythornis madagascariensis)

Welcome back! This post is going to be much more lighthearted than the last one, as I am going to be talking about my first time seeing an animal in the rainforest during my time studying abroad in Madagascar. Meet the Madagascar pygmy kingfisher!

Madagascar pygmy kingfishers (Corythornis madagascariensis) are a small orange bird found in the forests of Madagascar. It is endemic to these forests, meaning it is not found naturally anywhere else in the world. Unlike most kingfishers, which prey on (you guessed it) fish, these birds eat smaller forest-dwelling animals, like frogs. According to eBird, they tend to sit in one place for a bit, before “darting after prey,” which is exactly how my observation of it went. This kingfisher is currently listed as “least concern,” by the IUCN, meaning it is not at risk of going extinct. This is primarily due to its large range across many different forests in the country. However, the IUCN does note that the population is decreasing, likely due to habitat loss from human activity across Madagascar.

Ever since I was a kid, I have loved animals. When I was little my mom thought channels like Cartoon Network were inappropriate, so I replaced it with David Attenborough and National Geographic. Growing up in Brooklyn, though, I didn’t have many opportunities to see wildlife outside of the zoo. I dreamed about visiting wild places like rainforests, so when I finally had the opportunity through this program it felt surreal.

Before I get into the story of seeing this first animal, I want to take a couple steps back and talk about the trek that was traveling to this rainforest, Ranomafana National Park. On a nice summer day at the end of May 2024, I said goodbye to my family, and met the small group of students I’d be spending the next 45 days with. We got on a plane at JFK Airport in New York City bound for Nairobi, Kenya. This flight was 14 hours long: by far the longest plane ride I had ever been on. After passing the time sleeping and watching movies, I finally landed in a new continent. Exhausted from the flight but excited to be in Africa for the first time, I walked around the airport taking it all in. After grabbing a bite to eat, my excitement was dampened when I heard that our flight to Madagascar was delayed by several hours. After spending nearly the whole day in the Nairobi Airport, we finally boarded the plane as the sun was setting. Absolutely wiped from a full day in airports and on a plane, I passed out as soon as I hit my seat. Three hours later, I finally woke up in my destination: Antananarivo, the capital city of Madagascar. It was late at night, and the sun was down, so I could only see glimpses of the city as we got in a van and drove to our hotel for the night.

After crashing at the hotel, we spent the next full day in Antananarivo, before finally departing for the rainforest the next morning. This drive, which took us about 15 hours in total, was possibly the most stressful driving experience I have ever had. The road took us up and down many cliffside roads. Every time another car passed us going the opposite direction, I was nervous our big van was going to tip over and fall off. The roads were also full of potholes, so our driver was constantly slowing down and turning slightly to avoid them. The drive was split between two days, with an overnight stop at a hotel in a smaller city.

On the second day of the drive, we woke up early and got back in the van, knowing that we were finally going to reach our destination at some point today. If the trip took 15 hours in total, we didn’t see any rainforest until somewhere around hour 13. Most of the country was full of grasslands, rice fields, and artificial pine forests that are harvested every year. This was shocking, as it was clear just how much of the country’s rainforest had been removed by people. Hearing about deforestation and habitat loss in a class is one thing, but seeing it laid out like this was so much more impactful.

I left New York the morning of May 24, and I didn’t make it to the rainforest research station I’d be living at until the afternoon on May 27: it took nearly three full days of traveling to get from point A to point B (four days minus the one spent in Antananarivo). This was the longest and most exhausting trip I have ever been on, and honestly I hope it will stay that way! Finally stepping out of the van in the middle of a rainforest, though, was breathtaking: it was truly a dream come true.

Not my best photo, but it is the first one I took after getting out of the van.

As you can see from the above photo, the sun was setting, and the mountains began to cast a shadow over our surroundings, so we lugged all our bags inside and began to explore Centre ValBio (CVB), the research facility we’d be staying at. For more information about CVB, you can check out my previous post. For now, lets fast forward to the next morning, which was our first time going into the rainforest.

One of the first photos I took, just after the entrance to the trail.

The next morning, May 28, we got up bright and early for breakfast in the cafeteria, before embarking on our first of many hikes into the rainforest. Now, I am not even a little bit of a morning person, and I had just been traveling across continents for four days, but I was up bright and early, brimming with excitement. Stepping into the forest was dreamlike, since it was so vastly different than anywhere I had been before. My entire view was covered in green, apart from the brown dirt path in front of me (or, in some cases, stone) and the white morning fog obscuring the sky above.

After we had been walking for a while, we came upon a slope completely covered in dead leaves. As we made our way down it, one of the guides pointed and said something in Malagasy. Our professor relayed to us that it was a pygmy kingfisher, and pointed out the tiny orange bird. From where we were standing, it could have been just a fruit on the branch, but once I looked through my binoculars, I saw its little tail and beak.

Zoomed out view of the kingfisher.

Although I had definitely been hoping our first animal would be a lemur, since they are what Madagascar is known for, as soon as I saw the kingfisher I forgot all about that. According to the guides, this is one of the rarer birds you can find in Ranomafana, so we were very lucky to get to see one. As I watched it playfully hop from branch to branch, I took photo after photo, making sure I could capture the moment. At one point, it even looked right at us.

After a couple minutes of hopping back and forth, the kingfisher darted off in a bolt of orange, disappearing into the trees. Although it was brief, this encounter gave me my first glimpse at what the next 45 days of my life would be like. It also highlighted the unpredictability of the forest: at no point in this entire program did I set out on a hike knowing for sure what I would see that day.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this introductory story! Next week I will continue the same thread with the story not of the first lemur I saw on my trip, but the first close encounter I had with one, which was genuinely a life-changing experience.