HALCYON KINGFISHER. G75 



floor of it the moist and fetid pellets of fish-bones were strewed 

 in all directions. It appeared to have been inhabited for two 

 or three years. The old birds were exceedingly shy. If any 

 one made his appearance within sight of their abode, they 

 would not go near it. Young birds in general, when their 

 parents are absent, do not utter the slightest note until they 

 return. With these Kingfishers however this was not the 

 case, for had it not been owing to their loud and incessant 

 chirping for food, the nest would not, in all probability, have 

 been discovered. But whether this is a general characteristic 

 of the species, I have not had the means of ascertaining. As 

 they became ripe, they were very voracious, and not easily 

 satisfied. They were six in number, and continued a long 

 time in their abode, before they took to flight. They usually 

 sat at the mouth of the hole when they received food, in the 

 same way as the sand martins, when they are nearly fledged. 



" In July last, I saw a male and a female Kingfisher with 

 four young ones about eight days old, which were taken out of 

 a hole about two feet in depth, in a sand bank upon the river 

 Calder, at a short distance from Douglass Park, in the parish 

 of Bothwell, Lanarkshire. The brood, according to report, 

 had been sitting upon sand intermixed with a small quantity 

 of the fibrous roots of trees, and surrounded by the pellets of 

 fish-bones.'"' 



JNIr Henry Turner states in Loudon's Magazine, Vol. IV, 

 p. 450, that at Bury St Edmund's in Suffolk " some boys 

 watched an old one into a hole in the bank of the river Lark, 

 and attempted to capture it on its exit ; but without success in 

 this case. They then with a crooked stick pulled out a por- 

 tion of the nest, consisting of a few feathers, old dried roots, 

 and hay. I subsequently examined the hole," he continues. 

 " It was in a low meadow 300 yards east of Northgate Street, 

 and on the bank of a small stream. The entrance to the hole 

 was about three feet from the water, and one foot beneath the 

 level of the meadow. Hole nine inches in diameter, and about 

 five feet in length ; straight, and somewhat larger at the end 

 than at the entrance." Various other individuals have alleged 



