IIALCVON KINGFISHER. 677 



as the floor is so thickly strewed with them, tliat no vacant 

 spot might be found, but they assuredly are not by design built 

 up into a nest. The hole is from two to four feet long, sloping 

 uj^wards, narrow at the entrance, but widening in the interior, 

 in order perhaps to give the birds room to turn, and for the 

 same apparent reason the eggs are not placed at the extremity. 

 I aui not a little sceptical as to its sometimes selecting the old 

 hole of a water-rat, which is the deadly enemy to its eggs and 

 young ; but it seems to indicate a dislike to the labour of dig- 

 ging. It frequents the same hole for a scries of years, and will 

 not abandon it, though the nest be repeatedly plundered of the 

 eggs or young." 



In the second volume of the Naturalist, p. 274, Mr Ailing- 

 ton gives the following account of it : "A friend of mine while 

 fishing on a small trout-stream, near Louth, called the Crake, 

 in the early part of June, observed a Kingfisher, with a fish in 

 its mouth, flying several times near his hat with a whirring 

 noise. He watched it until it entered a hole in the bank, the 

 entrance to which was strewed with fish bones. On digging 

 into the hole (which commenced low down in the bank, and 

 ran upwards in a slanting direction for about two feet), he found 

 the nest, containing sev^en young birds just hatched. The bot- 

 tom of the nest was excessively thick, and mixed up with small 

 bones of the stickleback. Its structure, excepting the mixture 

 of fish-bones, was not very unlike that of a Thrush. It crum- 

 bled to pieces on being touched, and I could procure no portion 

 worth preserving. Near the nest was another hole, which had 

 all the appearance of having been the Kingfisher's last year's 

 residence, the bones at the entrance being dry and crumbly ; 

 but in this the parent bird again commenced laying, and on 

 opening the nest six eggs were found on the fragments of the 

 structure. They were white, and beautifully transparent, shew- 

 ing the yolk through, which gave them a pinkish hue at the 

 larger end. I have now in my collection one of the eggs, which, 

 though so transparent, I was surprised to find thicker and 

 stronger than the generality of eggs, and rounder in its form, 

 the circumference being two inches and a half, the length eight- 

 tenths of an inch." 



