Ringed Kingfisher

The powers of concentration of the ringed kingfisher, the largest in the Americas, would make the most accomplished meditator feel like a caffeinated kindergartner in a toy store full of puppies. When hunting, she can hold her intense focus on the water below for up to two hours at a time, her attention unwavering, undivided, and unbroken. We humans are lucky to manage a few seconds, deluged and distracted as we are by ceaseless and disparate stimuli, much of which originates between our own ears. Her physical stillness belies the torrent of data coursing through her from her surroundings, a continuous flow of invisible energy from prey to predator. Her keen eyes catch the slightest ripple, the subtlest shadow, the briefest flash of silvery scales, ensuring that she will not miss her moment. She is not always successful, of course. Her potential meal is just as adapted to avoiding her powerful bill as she is at wielding it, but even a miss will not disrupt her flow state. She will simply return to her perch, shake the beads of water from her glossy blue-green and orange feathers, and begin again.