CHAPTER VII 



" The long-leaved willoiv, on whose bending spray, 

 The pyd Kingfisher, having got his prey, 

 Sate ivith the small breath of the ivater shaken, 

 Till he devoured the fish that he had taken.'" 



So writes Michael Drayton in the sixteenth century, and 

 how true an observer of Nature the old poet was is proved 

 by the words of our latest ornithologist: " It alights on some 

 twig bending over the stream, its weight causing it to 

 swing gently to and fro, whence it scans the young trout 

 sporting in the pool below, and suddenly it will drop into 

 the water, and almost before the spectator is aware of the 

 fact, is back again on its perch with a struggling fish in its 

 beak." Nor must the meaning of Drayton's "py'd" be 

 mistaken, for in his day, and indeed much later, anything 

 of more than one colour was called pied, so long as gaiety 

 of tint was the result of the combination. So Shakespeare 

 calls the daisy "pied," and Ben Jonson the rainbow. 



But to come back to our kingfisher, " famoused for 



