346 BRITISH BIRDS. 
frost-bound, and their storm-driven inhabitants obliged to seek the open 
waters near the sea. LHven here the poor Kingfisher often fares badly, and 
after an unusual spell of frost numbers of them are picked up starved to 
death. Examples are sometimes found frozen to the branch on which they 
have been sitting.” 
Few birds are connected with more fables than the Kingfisher. The 
superstition that a dead Kingfisher, when suspended by a thread, would 
turn its beak * to that particular point of the compass from which the wind 
blew, is now fortunately as dead as the Kingfishers on whom the experiment 
was tried. The classical fable that the breeding-season of the Kingfisher was 
in midwinter, when the sea remained calm and undisturbed by tempestst, 
is equally as inexplicable and as profoundly forgotten. 
The Kingfisher is so well known that it scarcely needs description. The 
upper parts, including the cheeks, vary from metallic cobalt-blue, especially 
brilliant on the back, to emerald-green, barred on the head and spotted on 
the wing-coverts. The underparts are rich chestnut, shading into white on 
the throat ; and the lores and the ear-coverts are also chestnut, shading 
into white on the sides of the neck. Bull black; legs and feet red; irides 
dark brown. There are no differences in the colour of the plumage attri- 
butable to age, sex, or season of any importance, except those of the young 
in first plumage, in which the bill and feet are brown, all the colours paler 
and suffused with brown, especially on the breast, which is barred with 
greenish grey. 
* © But how now stands the wind ? 
Into what corner peers my halcyon’s bill ?” 
MaRLOWE: Jew of Malta. 
+ ‘This night the siege assuredly I’1l raise : 
Expect Saint Martin’s summer, halcyon days.” 
SHAKESPEARE: Henry VI. 
