Co urie rs of th e Air. 55 



of azure, green, and gold, is familiar to every 

 angler. He hears it far down stream ; it comes 

 under the old ivied bridge, passes like a flash, 

 and is gone how quickly the following will show. 

 Mr. George Rooper,the well-known Biographer of 

 the Salmon, was travelling on the Great Western 

 Railway, which between Pangbourne and Reading 

 runs parallel with, and close to, the Thames. As 

 the train approached the river a kingfisher started 

 from the bank and flew along the river for nearly 

 a mile. Mr. Rooper watched it the whole 

 distance, and its relative position with the 

 window never varied a yard ; the bird flying at 

 exactly the same pace as that at which the train 

 travelled, and which the observer had just 

 previously ascertained to be fifty-five miles 

 an hour. This is about half the speed at 

 which the eider-duck flies, as, when fairly on the 

 wing, it makes upwards of one hundred and 

 twenty miles an hour. The rapidity with which 

 all birds of the plover kind fly is well known, 

 and a "trip" of golden plover have been seen 

 midway between Hawaii and the mainland. An 

 officer in Donald Currie's line recently brought 

 home with him a specimen of the St. Helena 

 waxbill which he caught when on watch on the 

 bridge of the Grantully Castle. At the time the 

 nearest land was distant a thousand miles, and 

 the little captive was so distressed that it quietly 

 allowed the officer to capture it. 



