KINGFISHER'S H^U^JTS 19 



fish-bones " apparently worked by the bird's movements 

 as she sits, into the shape of a cup ; and .... they 

 generally cohere so as to become a very pretty nest, more 

 than an inch deep and quite smooth within." This is 

 the account in Yarrell ; and Montagu, writing early in 

 the century, uses much the same terms. 



But there is a nest in the British Museum, taken 

 from a deep hole in a bank on the Thames, which con- 

 sists of a loose layer of fish-bones half an inch thick, 

 strewn on the earth of the burrow without any sign of 

 definite arrangement. 



Just such a nest as this was found last summer close 

 to the sea, in a bank of hard sand not more than fifteen 

 feet above the shingle that runs all along the tide-mark. 

 The nearest fresh water is a rhine as the country 

 people call it three hundred yards away, with banks 

 too low for the most part to afford a safe retreat. 



It is a quiet spot the halcyons have chosen one of 

 those rare places haunted still even by the peregrine 

 and the raven. On a rocky brow near by, among 

 the mantling ivy, the falcons reared their brood only 

 last year. Under the overhanging steep a little farther 

 on a raven was shot upon her eggs. It was a cruel 

 fate; but the lives of the young turkeys at yonder 

 farm under the hill would have been worth but few 

 weeks' purchase had the bold bandits reared their brood 

 in safety. The widower raven soon found another mate ; 

 but if they have built another nest, it has so far happily 

 escaped discovery. 



The crannies of the cliff over the kingfisher's nest 



