THE KINGFISHEK 69 



ingredient, is sold for a few pence to a village 

 fisherman, who in time uses the beautiful feathers 

 as the dressing of the " shoulders " of a salmon- 

 fly. Because of the kingfisher's timidity, and 

 also because of certain of his habits, the produc- 

 tion of a complete story of his life is beset with 

 many difficulties. Much has been written of 

 the habits of this bird which is wholly incorrect, 

 unless, indeed, such habits differ to an amazing 

 extent from those of the particular bird I have 

 watched in his favourite breeding haunt about 

 two or three miles from my old village. 



The kingfisher, on the approach of winter, 

 often leaves his home beside the brook, flies far 

 away down the main river to the estuary, and 

 takes up his abode near the fringe of the sea. 

 There he subsists on the small fish that the storm- 

 lashed tides, receding from high-water mark, 

 leave imprisoned in the pools of the rocks ; till 

 with the advent of spring the heavy floods 

 become infrequent in river and brook, and, 

 encouraged by the increasing warmth, the tiny 

 samlets, soon to be followed by the silvery 

 minnows, glance again in the shallows beneath his 

 old nesting place. 



But even in summer the kingfisher's move- 

 ments are not regular along the course of the 

 stream near which he rears his family. In his 

 flight from one point of the stream to another I 



