98 KINGFISHER. 



Then came 

 Swift as a meteor's shining flame, 

 A Kingtisher from ont the brake, 

 And almost seemed to leave a wake 

 Of brilliant hues behind. 



Faber— TVie Ckerioell. 



The food of the Kingfisher consists chiefly, no doubt, of little 

 fishes, but they are principally minnows. It eats sticklebacks, 

 young gudgeons, dace, miller's thumbs, or battle heads, and some- 

 times trout and lastspring ; it takes also small crustaceans, water 

 shrimps, and beetles, with other aquatic insects; and it has 

 been seen to take leeches. An instance is given in the Woolhope 

 Transactions for 1869 (p. 76) of a Kingfisher being choked in the 

 attempt to swallow a small perch, which set up its back spring 

 fin, and killed its own destroyer by sticking in his throat. 



The nest of the Kingfisher is always placed in a bank in a 

 hole made by the bird. It is usually in some river bank, but it is 

 occasionally found in banks of earth at some distance from the 

 water. The description of a nest is given in the Woolhope Trans- 

 actions for 1S69 (p. 38). The hole here was in a perpendicular 

 bank, six feet above the ordinary water level. The entrance was 

 oval in shape, two inches and three-quarters perpendicularly, and 

 two inches and a half in its horizontal diameter. It was placed 

 about a foot below the surface, was two feet in length, and inclined 

 upwards to within two inches of the surface. Here a wider space, 

 some six inches in diameter, was hollowed out for the nest of fish 

 bones. The Rev. Clement Ley, than whom few people have found 

 more nests of the Kingfisher, says the holes are invariably bored by 

 the bird. They are always nearly, if not quite, straight, always 

 greater in height than width at the entrance, always with an upward 

 incline, and are utterly unmistakable. Mr. Ley has examined a 

 great number of nests, in order to setde the old question, whether 

 the Kingfisher actually constructs a nest of fish bones, or whether 

 the bones with which the eggs are found surrounded, are merely an 

 accidental accumulation of the indigestible portions of food, which, 

 like the Owl and some other birds, the Kingfisher disgorges. The 



