454 ALCEDINID.E. 



repair to tropical quarters, reaching the isthmus of Panama, 

 most of the Antilles and Trinidad, where according to 

 Leotand it is resident, and the same is said of it in some 

 other West Indian islands ; * but in those which have been 

 the home for any length of time of a competent ornithologist 

 it is declared to be migratory. It is a winter visitant to 

 Bermuda, arriving, says Wedderburn, in September and 

 disappearing in April. In Newfoundland, where says Mr. 

 Reeks (Zool. s.s. p, 1692) it is tolerably common, it is, 

 owing to the rigour of the climate, only a summer visitor. 



The points in which this bird chiefly differs from the 

 Kingfisher of this country may be briefly stated as follows. 

 It haunts more rapid and turbulent streams, besides shewing 

 at time^ a more decided preference for a maritime life, so 

 as to be seen actively fishing half-a-mile out at sea. When 

 frequenting the shore, crustaceans seem to form a consider- 

 able part of its food, and these are not the small and low 

 forms on which our own bird preys, but some of the highest, 

 as crabs (Ibis, 1859, p. G7).f Its powerful build enables it to 

 swallow many fishes, especially the smaller malacopterygians, 

 without killing them first, though acanthopterygians, and 

 tough, hard-scaled fishes of any group are beaten against the 

 bird's perch till they are dead, and if large their more digestible 

 parts are alone swallowed.! It does not generally plunge 



* Thus Mr. Ober (Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. 1878, pp. 62, 193 and 272) says of 

 it in Dominica, St. Vincent's and Grenada; while Sundcvall (CEfvers. K. Vet. 

 Ak. ForlianWl. 1869, p. 585) asserts that it is found throughout the year in 

 St. Bartholomew's. Both these authorities seem to have relied chieHy on infor- 

 mation furnished to them, which was probably erroneous. 



+ But on fitting opportunity a crab will retaliate, for Wedderburn saw one 

 seize a Belted Kingfisher, he had shot, while .struggling in the water, and drag it 

 beneath the surface. 



t Mr. C. C. Abbott (Nature, vii. p. 362, xi. p. 227) having had considerable 

 experience of this bird's habits, when catching almost exclusively small cyprinoids 

 — soft-finned fishes, denied the assertion often made of its beating its prey to 

 death before eating it. Being induced, however, by the evidence of a credible 

 witness to think there might be ground for the established belief, he continued 

 his observations in other places where the bird was feeding upon larger fishes, 

 which he found to be butchered by it in the manner already stated. Mr. Gosse 

 (B. Jamaica, p. 82) records a singular instance of two birds seizing the same fish 

 simultaneously and tugging at it till the grasp of one gave way. 



