Laughing Kingfishers.



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Jill’s head and neck were ashy grey in colour, her crest dark

brown, and a ring of brown feathers extending from ear-covert

to ear-covert round the back of her head. Her wings were

beautifully marked with light blue feathers, his with iridescent

pink.


When I bought them, the poor birds were in a wretched

state, with broken beaks and no tails. Their beautiful brown

dog-like eyes, full of expression, induced me to buy them.


After arriving at their new home, they were almost be¬

wildered at the sight of a clean bath, but having once splashed

into it, they bathed again and again as if it were impossible to

have enough. They managed to laugh, a hoarse cracked sound

at first, but after living in their country home for a year or two,

their laugh became the complete duet they sang together—

musical and in perfect harmony. They sang at dawn, noon and

sunset, and at other times as well. In spring and early summer

their laugh was so incessant and loud, in the early hours of the

morning, that they had to be shut into an inner cage till the

world was astir. Their habits were most fascinating to watch,

and their intelligence was great. They were very nervous and

shy of strangers, but quite tame and very gentle with their

owners. They bore the winter quite well, and broke the ice in

their bath to splash into it from a branch close by, on which

they sat intently watching the water, and raising and depressing

their crests. They bathed by turns, never together. After the

bath their toilet was a very pretty performance, as they shook

their soft crests and combed them with the shoulders of their

wings, bringing the wing over the back of the head.


Their home was a large wired-in enclosure under some

yews and an old walnut tree, sheltered from the north and north¬

east by a high log palisading and the stable wall. They had all

the south sun, and some of the south-east and south-west sun¬

shine as well. A wooden roosting-box of double thickness was

fixed high up against the wall, but they never used it, always

preferring to sleep in the open, sitting on a yew branch, one

laying its great bill across the other’s back, the one pressing

close to the other. Sometimes they had games of hide-and-seek

among the logs and trees in their enclosure, chasing each other



