THE BELTED KINGFISHER 



excavation lay directly beneath, not yet spread by wind and 

 rain. 



That a bird could have drilled such a tunnel seemed abso- 

 lutely impossible, for the bank was hard clay, thickly intermingled 

 with gravel and sand, baked by the glare* of the sun from earliest 

 morning until night. Above the opening meadow-grass waved, 

 beside it alders and willows grew, while beneath, where the last 

 of the gravel had been taken out, flourished a large and prosper- 

 ous frog-pond. One had to creep around the edges of this pond 

 clinging "to the willows," in reality, as well as to dig in with 

 the toes to climb to the location. We tried showing a clear 

 shaft of light into the far end of the tunnel, but failed to see any- 

 thing except that there was a turn having a still larger opening 

 made to the north. So we gave it up, but Mr. Hale consoled 

 me quite by pointing out the nests of a Cuckoo and a Summer 

 Yellow Bird, while I found the locations of a Robin, two Cat- 

 birds and a Purple Finch. 



Work on these nests took me back to the pit daily. For 

 three mornings I climbed to the opening and with a hand-mirror 

 explored its interior, but to no avail. It was May; every day I 

 found new nests here; Bob added to his forty a mile farther east; 

 I was working on the series of Black Vultures in the Limberlost, 

 calling on them each day and taking their likenesses every third 

 day, also visiting daily half a dozen widely scattered Cardinal 

 nests for the illustration of a book. Every day photographically 

 possible, I was in the woods early and late, stopping at absolutely 

 nothing that stood in the way of my work; you well may believe 

 with such richness of material on hand, there was no time for 

 anything that seemed unpromising. 



But one day, two weeks later, when passing the embankment, 

 a Swallow came from the opening and flew away. Immediately 

 I climbed up, throwing in a strong ray of light with a large 



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