226 



THE COMMMON KINGFISHER. 



bank amongst the roots of the elm trees, the bank being scooped 

 out by the tide and spates ; but as an embankment was formed 

 in March and April to protect the trees, they flitted a mile up 

 the burn, and had their nest near the plashmill. I have seen 

 them on the Kenley, the Cameron, the Kinaldy, and all our 

 burns in the district, but they are not common. The river 

 Eden, up at Dairsie, and Dura Den are favourite resorts. It 

 will sit for half an hour on an old stump or a stone watching 

 for prey. It usually selects a range or beat of 300 or 400 

 yards, which it traverses up and down the stream, rarely flying 

 beyond it, even when disturbed — so that two people, aware of 

 this habit, might easily shoot it by one waiting at each end till 

 within gunshot. 



A man killed one with a potato in winter while it was sitting 

 on a bush at Eden ; and I have a fine male in my collection 

 which was killed by a stone, in the autumn of 1880, at the 

 " Doo Craig," near the Golf Clubhouse. Another was shot on 

 a Sabbath day up the Moutray Burn by a man who was working- 

 at a farm close by ; having his boat and gun up the burn he 

 could not resist the inborn temptation of killing it. They 

 make their nest early, and generally fc in May, lay from five 

 to seven pure white glossy eggs, nearly round, -j-i by T 9 o of an 

 inch. Like the sand-martins, they dig out the hole which 

 forms their nest — both birds helping, for which their long bills 

 are much better suited than the martin's ; hence they need not 

 appropriate the old hole of a water rat, as said by some authors, 

 especially as the rat is a deadly enemy to their young. 



The hole is from 2 to 4 feet into the bank, sometimes 5 

 or 6 feet, and from 3 to 8 inches in diameter, enlarged 

 as they go in to give the birds room to turn, and always 

 sloping up to allow the offensive matter to run out. The 

 entrance is easily known from a rat's hole by its being 

 pear-shaped instead of round, and the under side grooved out 

 by the long toes of the bird on entering ; as the under side of 

 a sand-martin's is flat below (by the short legs and breast of 

 that bird) and round above. 



One distinctive peculiarity in the foot of the kingfisher is 

 the outer and middle toes are joined for two-thirds of their 

 extent, having two claws, as it were, on one toe — one of the 

 best examples of the wide-mouthed and flat-footed birds of the 

 second family of the yicavua. The nest is not always placed at 

 the end of the hole like the sand-martin's. It is generally 

 composed of small fish bones, somewhat like a mavis's in size,. 



