 It has a wide range extending from the Red Sea across southern Asia to Polynesia.A number of subspecies and subspecies groups have been split from this species including the Pacific kingfisher, the islet kingfisher, the Torresian kingfisher, the Mariana kingfisher, and the Melanesian kingfisher.The collared kingfisher was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in his "Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux" in 1780.