486 KINGFISHER 



it resorts to the sea-shore, but a severe winter is sure to occasion a 

 great mortality in the species, for many of its individuals seem 

 unable to reach the tidal waters where only in such a season they 

 could obtain sustenance ; and to this cause rather than any other 

 (though, on account of its beauty and the utility of its feathers in 

 making artificial flies, it. is shot and netted in great numbers) is 

 perhaps to be ascribed its general scarcity. Very early in the year 

 it prepares its nest, which is at the end of a tunnel bored by itself 

 in a bank, and therein the six or eight white, glossy, translucent 

 eggs are laid, sometimes on the bare soil, but often on the fish- 

 bones, which, being indigestible, are thrown up in pellets by the 

 birds ; and, in any case, before incubation is completed these rejeda- 

 menta accumulate so as to form a pretty cup-shaped structure that 

 increases in bulk after the young are hatched, but, mixed with 

 their fluid excretions and with decajdng fishes brought for their 

 support, soon becomes a dripping foetid mass. 



The Kingfisher is the subject of a variety of legends and super- 

 stitions, both classical and mediaeval. Of the latter one of the 

 most curious is that having been originally a plain grey bird it 

 acquired its present bright colours by flying towards the sun on its 

 liberation from Noah's ark, when its upper surface assumed the hue 

 of the sky above it and its lower plumage was scorched by the heat 

 of the setting orb to the tint it now bears. ^ More than this, the 

 Kingfisher was supposed to possess many virtues. Its dried body 

 would avert thunderbolts, and if kept in a wardrobe would preserve 

 from moths the woollen stufis therein laid, or hung by a thread to 

 the ceiling of a chamber would point with its bill to the quarter 

 whence the wind blew. All readers of Ovid {Metam. bk. xi.) know 

 ho \y the faithful but unfortunate Ceyx and Alcyone were changed 

 into Kinorfishers — birds which bred at the winter solstice, when 

 through the influence of ^olus, the wind-god and father of the 

 fond wife, all gales were hushed and the sea calmed so that their 

 floating nest might ride uninjured over the waves during the seven 

 proverlDial "Halcyon Days"; while a variant or further develop- 

 ment of the fable assigned to the Halcyon itself the power of 

 quelling storms.^ 



The common Kingfisher of Europe is the representative of a 

 Avell-marked Family of birds, the Alcedinidx or Halcyonidse of 

 ornithologists, which is considered by some authorities ^ to be 

 closely related to the Bucerotidse (Hornbill) ; but the affinity can 

 scarcely be said as yet to be proved ; and to the present writer 



^ Eolland, Faune populaire de la France, ii. p. 74. 



- In many of the islands of the Pacific Ocean the prevalent Kingfisher is the 

 object of much veneration. 



s Of. Eyton, Contrib. Orn. 1850, p. 80 ; Wallace, Ann. Nat. Hist. ser. 2, 

 xviii. pp. 201, 205 ; and Huxley, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1867, p. 467. 



