500 



THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 



thousands upon thousands being killed every 

 year in India alone, to supply the demands 

 made by milliners for the decoration of 

 ladies' hats. 



Rollers frequent forest country, and 

 travel in pairs or in small companies: some 

 species are entirely insectivorous ; others eat 

 also reptiles, frogs, beetles, worms, and grain. 

 Four or five white eggs are laid in a nest 

 made of roots, grass, hair, and feathers, and 

 built in walls, under the eaves of buildings, 

 or in holes of trees or banks. 



Equally beautiful as a whole, and far 

 more widely known, are the KINGFISHERS. 

 But just as the common cuckoo has come to 

 overshadow the rest of its tribe, so the COM- 

 MON KINGFISHER eclipses all its congeners. 

 For centuries a wealth of fable, held together 

 by a modicum of fact, served to secure for 

 this bird a peculiar interest; whilst to-day, 

 though shorn of much of the importance 

 with which these fables had invested it, 

 this kingfisher is still esteemed one of the 

 most interesting and beautiful of its tribe. 



Green and blue are the predominating 

 colours of its upper- and bright chestnut- 

 red of its under-surface ; but owing to 

 structural peculiarities of the feathers of the 

 upper-parts, the reflection of the green and 

 blue areas changes with the direction of the 

 light from which the bird is viewed, in the 

 same way that the peacock's train-feathers 

 change according as the light falls upon them. 

 As is the rule where both sexes are brilliantly coloured, this bird breeds in a hole, which 

 in the present species is generally excavated in the bank of a stream, but sometimes in an old 

 gravel-pit or chalk-pit, a mile or even more from the water. Occasionally the crumbling soil 

 under the roots of an old tree affords sufficient shelter. No nest is made, although what is 

 equivalent to a nest is ultimately formed from the bird's habit of ejecting the indigestible 

 parts of its food on to the floor of the space in which the eggs are laid. In course of time this 

 becomes a cup-shaped structure ; but whether, as Professor Newton remarks, by the pleasure of 

 the bird or the moisture of the soil, or both, is unknown. With care the nest may be 

 removed entire, but the slightest jar reduces the whole to the collection of fish-bones and 

 crustacean skeletons of which it was originally composed. There is a tradition, not yet 

 extinct, to the effect that these " nests " are of great pecuniary value, and scarcely a year 

 passes without the authorities at the British Museum being offered such a treasure, at 

 prices varying from a few pounds to a hundred. The nest-chamber is approached by a tunnel 

 sloping upwards, and varying from 8 inches to 3 feet in length, terminating in a chamber 

 some 6 inches in diameter, in which the eggs are laid. These, from six to eight in number, 

 have a pure white, shining shell, tinged with a most exquisite pink colour, which is lost when 

 the eggs are blown. 



The young seem to be reared under very unsanitary conditions, for the ejected fish-bones 

 and other hard parts are not reserved entirely for the nest, but gradually distributed along 



Phot, ifW. F. Fisl'tt} 



KINGFISHERS AT HOME 



The plumage of this bird is remarkable far the beauty of its iridescent 

 hues 



