BELTED KINGFISHER, 455 



perpendicularly into the water after its prey, but with a 

 circular or spiral sweep. Dr. Coues (Bull. Nuttall Orn. 

 Club, 1878, p. 92) records an observation by a correspondent 

 of a Belted Kingfisher which, when the water was too rough 

 to admit of its fishing, greedily devoured the berries of the 

 sour-gum (Ni/ssa aqiiat'ica), ejecting in pellets their seeds 

 and skin. It has a loud, harsh cry, syllabled by Mr. Gosse 

 churr, not at all unlike a noise that may be made by a 

 watchman's rattle*, and usually uttered sitting, or when 

 disturbed. Like our own Kingfisher this bird breeds very 

 early in the season, and much in the same manner. A 

 hole is burrowed in a bank, and the nest is at the end of a 

 gallery — never apparently less than two feet in length and 

 sometimes as much as fifteen — wliich often turns at a sharp 

 angle, and is sometimes said to be tortuous. Occasionally 

 it would seem to be furnished with twigs, grass and feathers, 

 though most commonly without anything more than fishes' 

 bones and scales. f The eggs are said to be six or seven in 

 number, of a pure, shining, translucent white, by no means 

 always so spherical as is asserted, and measure from 1'37 

 to 1-25 by from 1-04 to 1-02 in. 



The bill is bluish-black, with the lower mandible lighter 

 at the base : irides hazel : head and cheeks dark bluish- 

 grey with a white spot just before and another under the 

 eye ; sides of the neck below and behind the crest white ; 

 back and wing-coverts bluish-grey, most of the latter tipj)ed 

 with white ; remiges black — the primaries with the basal 

 half of the inner web, and some irregular spots on the outer, 

 white ; the secondaries and tertials with the outer web 

 bluish-grey, speckled and tipped with white ; upper tail- 

 coverts bluish-grey, with whitish specks ; middle rectrices 

 bluish-grey, but black near the shaft and with irregular white 

 mottling across them, the rest greyish-black with interrupted 

 white bars and bordered externally with bluish-grey ; lower 



* Hence, according to Dr. Gundlach (Anales de la Sec. Esp. de Hist. Nat, 

 187S, p. 219), one of its names in Porto Rico is Matraca — a wooden rattle. 



f The nidification of this bird has been the subject of much discussion (Am. 

 Nat. i. p. 496; ii. pp. 218, 379, 403, 490, 614 ; iii. pp. 48, 615) due to some- 

 what hasty generalization of its varying modes. 



VOL. II. 3 N 



