FOR CAGES AND A VI ARIES. 



123 



need but little attention beyond keeping up their supply of 

 food; but no more than one pair should be kept in the 

 same place, and they will do better without other birdy 

 company. In times of scarcity of fish, a little raw meat 

 cut up small may be tried, and the birds will take to it 

 in default of more suitable diet. As the excrement of the 

 Kingfisher is very copious and white, it will be necessary 

 to have frequent recourse to a garden hose to keep the 

 place in presentable order. 



The female is duller in colour and a little smaller than 

 the male, otherwise the 

 sexes are very much 

 alike. The eggs, five to 

 seven in number, are 

 white, and are laid in a 

 hole, often three feet 

 deep, in a bank; there 

 is no nest properly so 

 called, for the fish-bones 

 found in the burrows of 

 these birds are merely 

 the "pellets" or "cast- 

 ings" that are brought 

 up by every bird of 

 prey, be it terrestrial or 

 aquatic in its habits. 



Give the Kingfisher 

 such a habitation as we 

 have just described, and 



he will take a mate and rear a brood, and live happily; 

 but confine him in a small cage where he has no room 

 to fly about and dry himself when he comes out of the 

 water, and he will be miserable and die of inflammation 

 of the lungs, the result of a chill caught from sitting in 

 his "wet clothes," or he will fall into a decline and 

 succumb to consumption brought on by a succession of 

 such chills and colds. 



Under such circumstances it is cruelty to keep him, or 

 attempt to keep him rather ; but where his habits are 

 understood and catered for, it is not, and may soon be 



THE KINGFISHER. 



