THE BELTED KINGFISHER 



man set a shovel on the spot we had measured then came down 

 on it with his foot, it curled up as if made of lead. We had to 

 bring another and use a hatchet for most of the work. We cut 

 an opening into the tunnel, six inches from the turn to the nest, 

 fitted a shingle to cover it, trimmed a piece of sod to fill the hole 

 so that it could not be noticed from the top; thus I had free access 

 to the young. The old birds never knew it. On their return 

 they entered the tunnel without the slightest hesitation. 



I always waited until their morning feeding was done. . As 

 they have long, tedious waits on stumps and dead limbs above the 

 water to catch the crabs and minnows which form the greater 

 part of their diet, and always utter their rattle on starting from 

 the river to the nest, there was plenty of time to work between 

 their visits, then drop the young into the nest and cover the 

 opening before the old ones arrived. The regurgitations proved 

 fish, clams and crabs to be the staple of diet, though there were a 

 few berry-seeds, occasionally the striped legs of a grasshopper. 



The first time I took those babies into my lap I was delighted. 

 They were the quaintest young birds I ever had handled; the 

 first of their kind. No wonder the snowy white eggs of the 

 Kingfisher are so very oblong. They have to be to allow the 

 growth of that enormous bill, for enormous it was, even on the 

 babies. The little fellows had eyes as large in proportion as their 

 elders, crests of blue coming, a tiny white dot before either eye, 

 broad collars of white, steel-blue wings and backs, tail and pri- 

 mary wing-feathers banded with white, and white breasts touched 

 with blue below the crop. 



The old birds were exactly like them, save that the breast 

 of the female was russet where that of the male was blue. Per- 

 haps these birds seemed slightly different to me from any others 

 I have worked with before or since, because they did so exactly 

 what I hoped they would do. Still I never have seen any living 



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