flashing, changing furrows and ridges, then 

 the bird that can point a bill straight to his 

 fish and hit him fair -just behind the gills 

 must have more in his head than the usual 

 chattering gossip that one hears from him on 

 the trout streams. 



This was the lesson that impressed itself 

 upon me when I first began to study Koskom- 

 enos; and the object of this little sketch, 

 which records those first strong impressions, 

 is not to give our kingfisher's color or mark- 

 ings or breeding habits you can get all 

 that from the bird books but to suggest 

 a possible answer to the question of how he 

 learns so much, and how he teaches his wis- 

 dom to the little kingfishers. 



Just below my camp, one summer, was 

 a trout pool. Below the trout pool was a 

 shaded minnow basin, a kind of storehouse 

 for the pool above, where the trout foraged 

 in the early and late twilight, and where, 

 if you hooked a red-fin delicately on a fine 

 leader and dropped it in from the crotch of 

 an overhanging tree, you might sometimes 

 catch a big one. 



