ORNITHOLOGY 



"5 



All communications for this department 

 should be sent to the Department Editor, 

 Mr. Harry G. Higbee, 13 Austin Street, 

 Hyde Park, Massachusetts. Items, articles 

 and pliotographs in tliis department not 

 otlierwise credited are by the Department 

 Editor 



The Belted Kingfisher. 



BY L. W. BROW NELL, PATERSOX, NEW 

 JERSEY. 



Any of my readers who have ever 

 spent even a short time in the country 



table food, and he sometimes even seems 

 to do so from preference. That he thus 

 cjuite frequently changes his diet, often 

 voluntarily when there is no real reason/ 

 for so doing, has been conclusively prov- 

 en upon several different occasions and 

 the theory that he lives exclusively upon 

 a tish diet seems to have been thorough- 

 ly exploded. Captain Charles Bendire 

 tells of baiting a trap for an owl with a 

 mouse and uponi visiting it the next morn- 

 ing he found a kingfisher caught by the 



THE NEST OF THE KINGFISHERS. 



near a lake, pond, river or stream of 

 any size that contains fish, must surely 

 be familiar with the sharp, rattling, roll- 

 call-like cry of the belted kingfisher ; for, 

 although the bird himself is large and 

 his plumage rather striking, his call is 

 so very much more conspicuous than is 

 he himself that it is often by it alone that 

 we are made aware of his presence, and 

 should it be sounded within half a mile 

 of us we cannot help but hear it. 



He is, as his name implies, largely but 

 by no means exclusively a fish eater, tak- 

 ing his prey alive, in fairly deep water, 

 by accurate, well planned dives, in which 

 he seldom fails of his object. When he 

 cannot obtain fish he will resort to a diet 

 of insects, small mammals and even vege- 



neck. The bird had evidently plunged 

 downward for the bait in the same man- 

 ner that he would have dived for a fish 

 and sprung the trap with his beak. Dr. 

 Elliot Coues relates the following con- 

 cerning a bird of this species that was 

 closely observed for some weeks in Flor- 

 ida : 



"When the water is so rough that it is 

 difiicult for him to obtain fish, instead of 

 seeking some sequestered pool, he re- 

 mains at his usual post, occasionally mak- 

 ing an ineffectual effort to obtain his cus- 

 tomary prey, until, nearly starved, he 

 resorts to a sour-gum tree in the vicinity, 

 and greedily devours the berries." This 

 argues him to be rather deficient in intel- 

 ligence, which is undoubtedly true. 



