THE KINGFISHER. 6i 



afraid, and would not come. She tried for some time to coax them, but at last 

 grew angry, and seemed to scold them for being such cowards. She even 

 took hold of one little bird with her claw, and tried to pull it out, but it clung 

 to the nest with all its might, and she was obliged to give it up. 



THE KINGFISHER. 



Once upon a time, as the story-books say, a house was built in a field that 

 had a steep bank in it, and in the bank a gravel-pit. 



When the house was finished, the field was laid out as a garden, and an 

 arbour made in the bank, close by the gravel-pit. People who sat in the 

 arbour on a summer's day looked over a winding river bordered with willow 

 trees, and fringed with reeds and rushes, and covered with the yellow water- 

 lilies, arrow-heads, and many other flowers. And they could see the little 

 willow wren hopping about close by her slender nest upon the reeds, and 

 the water-hen leading out her brood of young ones to enjoy themselves on 

 the stream. 



There were very many feathered friends close at hand, but the best of all 

 was to come. 



Very early in the spring a great round hole was seen in the bank close 

 by the arbour, and from the state of the arbour itself it was evident that 

 some birds had been at work ; but they were too shy ever to let themselves 

 be seen, and the whole affair, both as to the hole and the birds, remained a 

 mystery. 



But one day, much later in the spring, a number of delicate white egg- 

 shells lay just below the hole ; and scarcely had the discovery been made, 

 when a rushing noise w^as heard, and a large bird flew out of the hole, and 

 darted down the river, the sun glancing on his plumage of green and gold. 

 No other bird in England is dressed so gaily ; it could be but one — the 

 kingfisher. 



We must stop a moment to describe him, as he is the hero of our little 

 story. 



His body is not elegant in shape, for it is stout and thick, with a short 



