Lilac kingfisher Lilac kingfisher The lilac kingfisher or Celebes flat-billed kingfisher ("Cittura cyanotis") is a resident breeding bird in the lowlands of the Indonesia island of Sulawesi and the neighbouring Sangihe and Talaud Islands. It is the only member of the genus "Cittura". The first formal description of the lilac kingfisher was by the Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck in 1824 under the binomial name "Dacelo cyanotis". The genus "Cittura" was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup in 1848. The genus name is from classical Greek "kitta" for "magpie" and "oura" for "tail". The specific epithet "cyanotis" is from classical
Kingfisher rocks in Kent, which has also been considered a gull, but is now thought to have been a member of an extinct family. Amongst the three subfamilies, the Alcedininae are basal to the other two subfamilies. The few species found in the Americas, all from the subfamily Cerylinae, suggest that the sparse representation in the Western Hemisphere resulted from just two original colonising events. The subfamily is a comparatively recent split from the Halcyoninae, diversifying in the Old World as recently as the Miocene or Pliocene. The smallest species of kingfisher is the African dwarf kingfisher ("Ispidina lecontei"), which averages