THE BELTED KINGFISHER 



from the excavation lay directly beneath, not yet spread by wind 

 and rain. 



That a bird could have drilled such a tunnel seemed abso- 

 lutely impossible, for the bank was hard clay, thickly intermin- 

 gled with gravel and sand, and baked by the glare of the sun from 

 earliest morning until night. Above the opening meadow-grass 

 waved, beside it alders and willows grew, and beneath, where the 

 last of the gravel had been taken out, flourished a large and pros- 

 perous frog-pond. One had to creep about the edges of this 

 pond and cling to the willows, in reality, as well as dig in with 

 his toes, to climb up to the location. We tried repeatedly, by a 

 clear shaft of light we could throw into the far end of the tunnel, 

 and failed to see anything except that there was a turn and a still 

 larger opening made to the north. So we gave it up, but Mr. 

 Hale consoled me quite by pointing out the nests of a Cuckoo and 

 of a Summer Yellow Bird, and I found the locations of a Robin, 

 two Cat -birds and a Purple Finch. 



Work on these nests took me back to the pit daily. For three 

 mornings I climbed to the opening and with a hand-mirror ex- 

 plored its interior, but to no avail. It was May; every day I 

 found new nests here ; Bob added to his forty a mile farther east ; 

 I was working on the series of Black Vultures over in the Limber- 

 lost, calling on them every day and taking their likenesses every 

 third day, and visiting daily a half-dozen widely scattered 

 Cardinal nests for the illustration of a book. Every day pho- 

 tographically possible, I was in the woods early and late, stopping 

 at absolutely nothing that stood in the way of my work ; and you 

 well may believe with such richness of material on hand, there 

 was little time for anything that looked unpromising. 



But one day, two weeks later, when passing the embankment a 

 Swallow came to the opening and flew away. Immediately I 

 climbed up, and throwing in a strong ray of light with a good- 



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