68 BIRD LIFE IN A WESTERN VALLEY 



stump or branch above the water. Long before 

 I am aware of it he has seen my approach, and 

 directly I pause he is gone, with a glint of topaz 

 and emerald, through sunlight and shadow, to 

 some distant haunt that I have not discovered. 

 Only in summer, when he makes his home be- 

 neath a gravelly bluff where the river-bank is 

 so steep that the path of the angler deviates for 

 some distance from the course of the stream, am 

 I sure of being able to watch him well during 

 most of the long, bright day. But then I am 

 amply repaid for all my patience as I lie hidden 

 in the undergrowth on the bank opposite to the 

 kingfisher's home. 



The excessive shyness of the kingfisher may 

 be the result, in this western valley, of constant 

 persecution from sportsmen and poachers. As 

 he flashes by on his way to some favourite pool, 

 he seldom fails to awaken immediate curiosity 

 and wonder. Too often, alas ! the gun leaps to 

 the shoulder, and the radiant butterfly-bird 

 becomes a crumpled, blood-stained bunch of 

 feathers floating down the sunlit stream towards 

 the ford. Afterwards, when inartistically stuffed 

 and mounted by a taxidermist in some local 

 market-town, he becomes the principal ornament 

 in the gunner's best parlour ; or his skin, nailed 

 clumsily to a piece of wood and cured with a 

 home-made compound in which pepper is a chief 



