52 WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED. 



of their food, so they must be looked upon as great 

 friends of the agriculturalist. Strange that ignorant 

 superstition as to the habits and nature of this really 

 fine bird should for so long have placed him under the 

 ban of dislike and fear. 



Unfortunately for that brilliantly-coloured bird the king- 

 fisher, which lends such interest to the sides of our 

 running brooks and streams where the trout are now 

 beginning to rise as he flashes past with his shrill note 

 of tit-tit-tit a piping, rattle-like sound, his bright feathers 

 have a good value in the market, where they are sold 

 for the manufacture of artificial flies. So he is not 

 abundant, in consequence, as he used to be, and the banks 

 of lakes, ponds, and streams have lost many of these most 

 picturesque fishers. Still the patient observer may, 

 especially if he use a field-glass, note this bird as he sits 

 perched with exemplary patience on a convenient bough 

 projecting over the water, whence he darts with sudden 

 plunge as soon as his keen eye has marked its prey. 

 Upon a little layer of fish-bones his nest is to be found, 

 or simply on the earth of some dry sandpit, or now 

 and again in an old wall. Roundish glossy eggs will 

 be laid there during this month six, and even as many 

 as ten of them sometimes. They have been hatched out 

 frequently before the middle of the month. Besides 

 taking small fishes, the kingfisher lives on crustaceans, 

 dragon-flies, and water -beetles, of which he can stow 

 away a marvellous quantity. 



First of the swallow family to revisit our shores comes 

 the cosy-looking little sand-martin, which we expect to- 

 wards the end of March. He is the first of his tribe to 

 come, and the first to leave us. A colony of sand-martins 



