Water Poachers. 179 



and thither, bronze fly and bee are upon the 

 wing, and the carpet of grass and flowers is alive 

 with innumerable insects, all busily engaged in 

 fertilising their floral friends, or revelling in 

 nectar, and gilded with golden pollen. The 

 lime-trees are " a murmurous haunt of summer 

 wings," and the breath of summer is on our 

 cheek. Over there is an overhanging, leafless 

 bough and upon it has just alighted a king- 

 fisher. At first its form is motionless, then it 

 assumes more animation, and anon is all eye and 

 ear. Then it falls, hangs for a moment in the 

 air like a kestrel, and returns to its perch. Again 

 it darts with unerring aim and secures something. 

 This is tossed, beaten and broken with a for- 

 midable beak, and swallowed head foremost. 

 This process is again and again repeated, and 

 we find that the prey is small fish. From watch- 

 ing an hour we are entranced with the beauty 

 of the fluttering, quivering thing as the sun glints 

 from its green and gold vibrations in mid-air. 

 We gain some estimation, too, of the vast amount 

 of immature fish which a pair of kingfishers and 

 their young must destroy in a single season.* 



* " Then the kingfisher, with rufous breast and glorious 

 mantle of blue, would dart like a plummet from his roost, and 

 seize unerringly any little truant which passed within his ken. 

 The appetite of this bird was miraculous; I never saw him sat- 

 isfied. He would sit for hours on a projecting bough, his body 



N 2 



