The Woodland Kingfisher is an African kingfisher with blue upperparts and wings and a white underside. A southern African regional guide records it as a summer resident.
The upperparts are turquoise-blue, the wing coverts black and the underside white. The bill is red and black, with a black stripe behind the eye.
Across three breeding seasons from 2016 to 2019, 27 devices were fitted to 20 adult Woodland Kingfishers; five devices were retrieved from four birds. The five northbound post-breeding tracks averaged about 4,080 kilometres over 73 days, including 86.5 hours of flight. Departures ranged from 22 March to 17 April, near the end of the rainy season in South Africa.
All five tracks had long stopovers in Zambia, then crossed the Congo Basin quickly toward South Sudan. Four tracks stopped for about 25 days around 200 kilometres south of their final non-breeding sites. Those sites lay within about 100 kilometres of each other. Migratory flights took place at night. Both areas are open woodland that greens during the rainy season.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
All five migration tracks included long stopovers in Zambia.