250 ENGLISH LAKE DISTRICT FISHERIES 



has just alighted a kingfisher. 1 At first it is 

 motionless, then it assumes more animation. 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 its formidable beak, and swallowed 

 head foremost. This process is again and again 

 repeated, and we find that the prey is small fish. 

 From watching an hour we gain some estimation 

 of the vast number of immature fish which a pair 

 of kingfishers and their young must destroy in a 

 single season. 



As to just what part the dipper plays in the 



economy of salmon rivers and trout streams natu- 



The ralists are by no means agreed. Frank 



Dipper Buckland said that one might as well shoot 



a swallow skimming over a turnip field as a dipper 



over the spawning grounds. And this view I 



1 "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 satisfied. He would sit for hours on a projecting 

 bough, his body almost perpendicular, his head thrown back 

 between his shoulders ; eyeing with an abstracted air the 

 heavens above or the rocks around him, he seemed intent 

 only upon exhibiting the glorious lustre of his plumage, and 

 the brilliant: colours with which his azure back was shaded ; 

 but let a careless samlet stray beneath him, and in a twinkling 

 his nonchalant attitude was abandoned. With a turn so 

 quick that the eye could scarce follow it, his tail took the 

 place of his head, and, falling rather than flying, he would 

 seize his victim, toss him once into the air, catch him as he 

 fell, head foremost, and swallow him in a second. This 

 manoeuvre he would repeat from morning till night ; such a 

 greedy, insatiable little wretch I never saw." The Autobio- 

 graphy of a Salmon. 



