252 BIRDS OF THE SEA AND THE SHORE. 



It is remarkable that fable should add to these super- 

 natural gifts the power of song, as one of the accomplish- 

 ments of the Kingfisher. This belief must have been 

 very general among the ancients, and not confined to 

 the Greeks and Romans. Some of the Asiatic nations 

 still wear the skin of the Kingfisher about their persons 

 as a protection against moral and physical evils. The 

 feathers are used as love-charms ; and it is believed, if 

 the body of the Kingfisher be evenly fixed upon a pivot, 

 it will turn its head to the north like the magnetic 

 needle. 



The Kingfisher is singularly grotesque in his appear- 

 ance, though not without beauty of plumage. His long, 

 straight, and quadrangular bill, his short and diminutive 

 feet and legs, his immense head, and his plumage of 

 dusky blue, with a bluish band on the breast, and a white 

 collar around the neck, form a mixture of the grotesque 

 and the beautiful which, considered in connection with 

 his singularity of habits, may account for the super- 

 stitions that attach to his history. He sits patiently, 

 like an angler, on a post at the head of a wharf, or on the 

 trunk of a tree that extends over the bank, and, leaning 

 obliquely with extended head and beak, he watches for his 

 finny prey. There, with the light-blue sky above him and 

 the dark-blue waves beneath, nothing on the surface of the 

 water can escape his penetrating eyes. Quickly, with a 

 sudden swoop, he seizes a single fish from an unsuspect- 

 ing shoal, and announces his success by the peculiar 

 sound of his rattle. 



THE SPOTTED TATTLER. 



A very interesting bird inhabiting the shores of seas 

 and lakes is the Peetweet, or Spotted Tattler. The birds 

 of this species breed in all parts of New England, arriv- 



