HUNTING & SHOOTING IN CEYLON 



generally imaginary, but once very real by reason of the 

 swoop of a hawk amongst them. 



Many beautiful varieties of kingfishers came and perched 

 on snags in the water, or on overhanging branches above 

 it ; pigeons of every variety pattered about on the sand, or 

 came swooping through the trees with silent lightning flight, 

 and the whole forest was alive with song and twitter. One 

 huge kingfisher amused me very much by his stolid be- 

 haviour, as he sat on a creeper above the pool, gorgeous in 

 his black cap, yellow neck and breast, wonderful metallic 

 peacock-blue back and wings, and bright red beak and legs. 

 Nothing disturbed or alarmed him ; the other birds could 

 shriek, twitter, fly about 'and frighten each other ; but it 

 mattered not one jot to his lordship, nor did the sudden 

 advent of the hawk disturb him in the least. There he 

 sat intent on business in the shape of a meal, dropping every 

 now and then like a stone into the water, regaining his 

 perch to dry, sometimes with a prize in the shape of a small 

 fish, sometimes without one. This game he kept up for 

 quite half-an-hour before departing, and I was sorry to 

 lose him. 



At about 3 P.M., from the south side of the river, out 

 of the forest came, with the utmost caution, a small herd 

 of spotted deer, consisting of four good bucks, one very 

 young buck and two does, joined soon after by another doe 

 from the opposite side, which was at once taken possession 

 of by the master buck, not one of the others daring to even 

 look at her. They all drank with infinite caution and many 

 alarms, never seeing us in our high tree ; but I was most 

 interested to observe a buck now and then turn his head 

 clean round, until the horns hung downwards, to stare up 

 into the trees above him, evidently on the look-out for a 

 leopard. 



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