54 BY-WAYVS AND BIRD-NOTES, 
standing in the water his colors shade off into 
the greenish wash of the stream, and you rarely 
see him, no matter how near him you may be, 
before he springs into the air, and is away. I 
once shot a fine specimen as it flew past me, 
and it fell among some stones at a brook’s 
edge. Something attracted my eyes from the 
spot where it fell, and when I turned again to 
look for my bird I could not see it. I walked 
round and round, I knew it had fallen quite 
dead; but what had become of it? In fact it 
lay there in plain view under my eyes; but its 
colors were so uniform with those of the 
smooth, water-washed stones, amongst which 
it had fallen, that I was full five minutes dis- 
covering it. Every sportsman has experienced 
similar difficulty in looking for snipe and wood- 
cock after bringing them down. 
The kingfisher’s colors are, no doubt, of 
great advantage to him in taking his prey from 
the water. If he were red, instead of being 
dashed over with all the blue and purple and 
silver-gray, and liquid shadows of the brook 
itself, he would not catch many fish. How 
hard it must be for the minnows, as they dis- 
port in the dancing current, to see, through the 
trembling medium, the sky-blue and silvery 
markings of the bird sitting on a swaying 
branch between them and the sky! And how 
easy it would be for the kingfisher to get all 
the food he might desire if those little fish were 
less of the color of the water in which they 
swim. If quails were scarlet instead of mottled 
brown, how soon the hawks would exterminate 
them! 
But there is another side to this subject of 
which the poet and artist must take careful 
