136 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



current. When it encountered obstacles of stranded brush it hooked 

 its bill over them and scrambled across. Thus it led me a merry 

 chase, wading in the muddy shallows, until a fallen banana plant 

 stopped its wayward progress and I seized it. Unlike its neighbor 

 of the same age upstream, it had not become accustomed to being 

 taken in hands; its deafening screams and fierce attempts to bite 

 made, for duration and intensity, the best efforts of the other pale to 

 insignificance. It was ten agonized minutes before it became recon- 

 ciled to me, and I let it perch on my hand until its feathers dried 

 before returning it to the burrow. This bird left its burrow between 

 its thirty-fifth and thirty-seventh day." 



Plumages. — I have seen no very young birds. In immature birds, 

 probably birds of the first year, the sexes are distinguishable. In the 

 young male, the jugular area is dull gray washed with "cinnamon," 

 and the under tail coverts are pale cinnamon, both of which parts 

 are pure white in the adult male, though some adults have the 

 under tail coverts barred with bluish gray; the brown areas on the 

 under parts are paler than in the adult, "ochraceous-tawny" to "cin- 

 namon," more or less mixed with white ; these parts in the adult are 

 rich browns, "Sanford's brown" to "cinnamon-rufous"; the upper 

 parts and wing coverts are dotted with small white spots, and many 

 of the feathers have shaft streaks or median wedges of black; these 

 parts are clear, grayish blue, or "delft blue," in adults, without 

 streaks; young birds also have broad, median, black streaks in the 

 crest. Young females are similar to the young males but may be 

 readily recognized by the broad pectoral band, which is never present 

 in the male at any age ; in the adult female this is clear bluish gray, 

 but in the young bird it is broadly edged with rufous, or dull brown, 

 and sometimes mainly rufous; in the young female the under wing 

 coverts are wholly "cinnamon-rufous," whereas in the young male 

 these are partly white. 



I have not seen enough material to determine how long these 

 immature plumages are worn, or to learn much about the molts. 



Food. — Mr. Skutch (MS.) says on this subject: "The ringed king- 

 fisher's diet is rather monotonous. They live almost entirely, if not 

 exclusively on fish, often of large size, which they catch m the regu- 

 lar manner of kingfishers, but being larger birds their plunges are 

 more spectacular than those of the othei*s." 



One day "a female flew into a balsa tree, growing beside a small 

 stream, with a fish fully half as long as herself dangling crosswise 

 in her bill. For more than two and a half hours by the watch she 

 held it thus, changing her position only from one branch to another 

 of the same tree. I was at the time watching a green kingfisher's 

 nest, and I could keep her in sight without additional effort. When 



