1836 THE PICARIAN BIRDS 



streams, but it is by no means unusual to find it perched on trees at some distance 

 from water, and it occasionally haunts ravines and other insect-producing places, 

 where there is no water at all. Fish, I believe, form the staple article of its diet, 

 but it varies this with any living thing which is small enough. It is on record that 

 it devours lizards and similar small reptiles, and it is not averse to taking young 

 birds from their nests. Of this latter propensity I myself have been a witness. In 

 Rungpore, in the collector's compound, there stands, or stood some years ago, a 

 large tree full of crevices and holes, and much used as a nesting place by many 

 mynas and other birds. One morning I was passing under this tree, when I was 

 attracted by the loud shrieking of a Pelargopsis, accompanied by the cries of many 

 other birds. The most vehement and excited among these last were a pair of 

 mynas, whose newly hatched brood were in a large hollow in a big limb some forty 

 feet from the ground, and this had evidently attracted the attention of the blood- 

 thirsty kingfisher. For some time he sat on a branch close to the nest hole, giving 

 vent every now and then to his loud cries, but taking no notice of the small birds 

 which came half-heartedly close to him, with the evident wish, but not the pluck, 

 to attack him. Finally, in spite of the frantic shrieks of the parent birds, who 

 ultimately approached quite close to the kingfisher, the latter made a dive into the 

 hollow, and when he came out of it in his powerful beak there struggled a callow 

 young myna. Seating himself comfortably on a branch, he proceeded to swallow 

 it in just the same manner as he would have done a fish, and it may have been 

 the necessity of getting into position before he swallowed his prey which prevented 

 him from completing his meal inside the cramped hollow of the tree. At all events, 

 his action was the saving of the other young birds, for the mynas, rendered 

 furious by the disappearance of one of the youngsters down the throat of the 

 kingfisher, summoned up courage to attack him in earnest, whereupon he quickly 

 decamped." 



To the members of this genus it is almost impossible to assign a 

 6 K' fi h co U ec tive English name; for whereas in the Old World they are pied, 

 their transatlantic cousins are either gray or green. The genus com- 

 prises a small assemblage of long-billed and long-tailed kingfishers of fish-catching 

 habits; few of which are such strongly built birds as their short-beaked allies, 

 although some of the Oriental forms are nearly their equals in size. Their great 

 distinctive feature is that the sexes differ in color or markings; this difference gen- 

 erally displaying itself by the presence in either the male or the female of an ad- 

 ditional band on the breast. Seventeen species of these kingfishers are known, 

 twelve of which are American. In color, most of the latter are glossy green, but 

 four are gray; the best-known species being the belted kingfisher (Ceryle alcyon) of 

 North America. In the Old World all the species of the genus are either black 

 and white, or gray and white. One of the largest species is the great pied king- 

 fisher ( C. lugubris} from the Himalayas and the mountains to the eastward of that 

 chain throughout China to Japan. The head is crested, the crest feathers being 

 black with white spots, and there is a tuft of white feathers in the centre of the 

 crown, while the rest of the upper surface is banded with gray and white; round 

 the hind neck runs a broad white collar; the under surface of the body is white, 



