CATALOGUE OF BIRDS. 97 



from somewhere behind you, pass you like Hghtning, 

 and are out of range before you have time to put 

 your gun up ; thus it was with me. Whatever I 

 did was wrong, always wrong ; one thing I had to 

 be most careful about, and that was never to shoot 

 the bird unless I could collect it ; not very easy to 

 carry out when they were feeding principally on 

 tidal waters. To make a long story short, it must 

 have been ofettinof on for two months before I 

 managed to secure my first Kingfisher. I had gone 

 some distance up this estuary to a place where a 

 sluice runs underneath an embankment. At high 

 tide the water came through this and overflowed a 

 lot of oozy marshland intersected with innumerable 

 little rivulets ; this was a very favourite haunt. 

 Just on the inner side of this sluice were a lot of 

 posts and palings on which the Kingfishers perched 

 and spotted their prey coming in with the tide. 

 Adjoining this marshland was a wood, in which I 

 concealed myself one afternoon, having the sluice 

 and palings within view and shot of my position. 



Often on former occasions I had had to wait 

 for hours at a stretch without any result ; in this 

 particular instance, however, I was in luck's way, 

 for, after about a quarter of an hour's waiting, a 

 splendid Kingfisher, coming through the sluice from 

 the estuary, settled on one of the palings, but only 

 for a second or two at the outside ; then he flew 

 up the main creek of the marshy ground. I was 

 up with my gun in a second, and got a cross shot ; 

 it was difficult owing to the overhanging bough 



