RINGED KINGFISHER 133 



rusty tram rail, washed out by the flood, which leaned against the 

 bank just below the burrow. They seemed to encourage each other 

 in their dark subterranean labors. Both sexes shared equally in the 

 toil, and as soon as one emerged and flew up beside the other on the 

 rail, the latter went into the burrow, throwing out a jet of earth as 

 he disappeared into the darkness. Four or five minutes was the 

 usual period spent in the earthwork. On one occasion both were to- 

 gether in the burrow for a few minutes. Just after noon, while one 

 bird was working inside, its mate became tired of waiting on the rail 

 and flew upstream. The other, when it emerged and found itself 

 alone, followed in this direction. Although I remained until the 

 middle of the afternoon, the birds did not return, having worked less 

 than an hour that day. 



"I waited almost a month before daring to open the nest. I 

 probed the length of the burrow with a slender vine, repeating the 

 measurement several times to make sure I had reached the back. I 

 found the burrow to be Y feet 3 inches long, measured back this 

 distance from the top of the bank, and tried to calculate the position 

 of the nesting chamber from the direction of the portion of the tun- 

 nel I could see from the front. Experience with Amazon kingfishers 

 and motmots had taught me that by far the safest way to open a 

 burrow is to dig down behind it and make an opening in the back of 

 the nesting chamber just large enough to reach the eggs, afterward 

 closing it with a stone or a board and carefully covering over the ex- 

 cavation. 



"As I began to dig almost above it, the incubating bird, who had 

 stood its ground in face of the thrusts with the vine, flew out, uttered 

 a few hlechs and headed upstream, where it perched on a giant cane 

 leaning over the current and soon plunged for a fish. I now saw for 

 the first time that it was the male. Like other burrow-nesting birds 

 under the same circumstances, it seemed rather unconcerned, and this 

 despite the fact that I afterward found it the most devoted of 

 parents." 



Because he "had faith that the activities of birds, including their 

 periods on the nest during incubation, are rhythmic and more or less 

 constant for the species, rather than irregular and arbitrary," Mr. 

 Skutch was determined to learn how these kingfishers arranged their 

 shifts on the nest. In his efforts to solve this problem, he was at 

 "first baflEled, next challenged, and finally surprised." For many 

 weary hours, during nearly two weeks, and at various hours from 

 dawn to sunset, he patiently watched that hole in the bank, mostly 

 with little or no results. The use of what he called a "silent monitor," 

 a small stick stuck upright and loosely in the entrance of the bur- 

 row, enabled him to tell that a bird had either entered or left the 



