king-hunter

noun

king-hunter

noun
1

Obsolete Any of the kingfishers that primarily hunt on land rather than taking prey from the water.

  • They belong to that division of the family termed king-hunters, living chiefly on insects and small land-molluscs, which they dart down upon and pick up from the ground, just as a kingfisher picks a fish out of the water. They are confined to a very limited area, comprising the Moluccas, New Guinea and Northern Australia.1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 468:

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