INTRODUCTION. 69 
any we have yet considered. As, however, the majority of the 
forms we have referred to have had to do with water, we 
may begin our next series of forms with one familiar kind 
which haunts our streams, namely, the Kingfisher (Alcedo 
ispida). 
This well-known blue and red Bird, with its long, straight, 
and sharply pointed bill, may stand as the representative of at 
least one hundred and sixty-six species which are exceedingly 
like it. They are scattered very unequally over the whole 
Fig. 71. 


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The Dipper (Cinclus aquaticus). 
world, being most poorly represented in America, and most 
richly in the Indian Archipelago. 
The Common Kingfisher loves a quiet spot—some silent pool 
or some secluded trout-stream with deep banks and well 
shrouded with foliage. It flies very straight, with its short 
wings rapidly vibrating, and will dart from the tree on which it 
has perched, seize a fish and return to beat it dead against a 
branch, unless it carries it to the hole it has excavated in a 
