118 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



left voluntarily, but when July was past only the old birds were to be seen 

 in the neighborhood. 



Henry Mousley (1938), who made a prolonged study of a family 

 of belted kingfishers, estimated tlie period of incubation to be about 

 24 days. His report says, in conclusion : 



On summing up I find forty-two hours were spent with the birds (May 11- 

 July 24), during which time the young were fed one hundred times, or at an 

 average rate of once in every 25.2 minutes. Of course there were periods when 

 the feeding was much faster, as for instance, once in every 8, 9, 13, 20, and 21 

 minutes respectively. Sometimes the parents were absent from the nest for 

 long periods of time, such as, 150, 120, 105, 97, 93, 90, 85, 75, 70, and 60 minutes 

 at a time, when of course the young were without food. It was after these 

 long spells that the more rapid feedings generally took place. As already 

 remarked, the male seemed to pay the most attention to this part of the busi- 

 ness, for I find of those times when I was perfectly sure of the sex of the 

 parent, the male fed twenty-eight times to his partner's fourteen, or just double. 

 It was the male parent which was the last seen at the nest previous to the 

 departure of the one surviving young — a male. The food for the most part 

 consisted of small fish, crawfish, minnows, tadpoles, and probably beetles. 



Plumages. — The young kingfisher is hatched naked, blind, and 

 helpless, a shapeless mass of reddish flesh, looking much like a very 

 young puppy with a huge conical bill. Its eyes do not open for about 

 two weeks. Within a week, or less, the pinfeathers or feather- 

 sheaths appear, and soon the young bird bristles in all the feather 

 tracts with quills like a young porcupine, which grow to varying 

 lengths and show, before they burst, the pectoral band and the gen- 

 eral color pattern of the adult. When the young bird is 17 or 18 

 days old, a remarkable change takes places within the short space of 

 24 hours, for the sheaths rapidly burst and the juvenal plumage 

 blossoms out all over the body. 



In this plumage the young bird looks strikingly like the adult with 

 only minor differences, and the sexes are alike. Young birds of 

 both sexes, when fully fledged, have the pectoral band more or less 

 heavily tipped or mixed with cinnamon, rufous or dull brown; this 

 usually consists of narrow edgings in young males, but in young 

 females many feathers are half or more brown; the rufous band of 

 the female adult is only partially shown in the young female, mainly 

 on the flanks, and it shows to some extent in nearly all young males, 

 some having nearly as much as young females; the crest is darker 

 than in adults, there is more white in the wing coverts, the white 

 tips of the secondaries are more extensive, and the central tail 

 feathers are spotted, as in the adult female. This juvenal plumage 

 is also a first winter plumage, for it is worn without much change 

 until spring. Young birds have a first, prenuptial molt early in 

 spring, which involves most of the body plumage, perhaps all of it, 

 the tail, and apparently the wings also; this takes place between 



