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Clearing up the Collared Kingfishers

10,000 Birds

One new Pacific island form is the Mariana Kingfisher ( Todiramphus albicilla ) from the Mariana Islands in Micronesia. Saipan, Micronesia. Subspecies vitiensis , Fiji. Top Flickr user Sjahanmi (Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-commercial). Mariana Kingfisher. Flickr User Tropical Pete (Used with permission). Photo by author.

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Confusing Collared Kingfishers

10,000 Birds

Vanuatu has five subspecies, Fiji has three, and the far flung Solomon Islands have twelve. Subspecies albicilla , Saipan, Micronesia. It’s when you start heading off into the Pacific, however, that you start bumping into the really unusual forms. It is also where the majority of subspecies occur.

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