PICARIAL. ( 267 ) ALCEDINID.€.. 



THE KINGFISHER. 



Alcedo ispida. 



There came. 

 Swift as the nieteor s shining flame, 

 A Kingfisher from out the brake. 

 And almost seemed to leave a wake 

 Of brilliant hues behind. 



FABEK. 



The Kingfisher is found on all our streams, where its 

 brilliant plumage is never seen to greater advantage than 

 when it glances in the sun, as the bird, darting from some 

 retreat by the water-side, rapidly wings its way along the 

 course of the river. On the Tweed it is occasionally 

 observed at Paxton, and more frequently higher up the 

 river in the neighbourhood of Ladykirk,^ Milne Graden, 

 Coldstream, Lees, Mertoun, and Gladswood. Mr. Thomas 

 Hood, Coldstream, has informed me that there was a King- 

 fisher's nest near Lees in the summer of 1886; and Mr. 

 John Fulton, salmon-fisher, says that a pair bred near 

 Damford Shiel, at Milne Graden, two or three years ago. 



It is an early breeder, and the eggs are asserted to have 

 been taken on the Tweed, for the second time in the season, 

 from the same pair of birds, by the 1 0th of April.^ The Whit- 

 adder seems to be the favourite resort of the Kingfisher in 

 Berwickshire, and the nest has frequently been found on the 



' Mr. John Blair, artist, lias mentioned to me that he often saw Kingfishers 

 at the side of the Tweed at Ladykirk in the sunmier of 1887, where he believes 

 they nested that season. 



- Hist, Ber. Nat. Club, vol. vii. p. 285. 



