14 KINGFISHER. 



This specimen I have now preserved. The question has been 

 raised as to whether the Kingfisher is a difficult bird to shoot 

 or not: the above is my experience on the subject. 



The Kingfisher is a native of Europe, Asia, and Africa. 

 It inhabits the temperate parts of liussia and Siberia; in 

 Denmark it is rare. It is found in Germany, France, Hol- 

 land, Italy, and Greece. In the other two continents it is 

 likewise widely dispersed. In this country it is universally, 

 though nowhere numerously diffused. It is a splendid bird, 

 its iridescent colours varying according to the light they are 

 seen in, from brig;ht torquoise blue to the deepest green in 

 some parts of its plumage, and in others the darker colours 

 of copper and gold. When dead, however, much of its beauty 

 is gone; and one writer has imagined that even alive, it has, 

 when perceiving that it is observed, the power of dimming the 

 resplendency of its plumage, as if conscious how marked an 

 object it otherwise was; and I fancy that some idea of the 

 sort ha* before now occurred to myself. 



In Yorkshire, this bird is as frequently to be met with as 

 in other parts of the country, but, speaking 'of the neigh- 

 bourhood of Huddersfield, Mr. W. Eddison writes to Mr. Allis, 

 'The destructive plan of snaring them or catching them with 

 bird-lime will shortly place them in the list of rare birds;' 

 and Mr. Richard Leyland, 'to the same,' says 'In autumn, 

 an assemblage of them in some of the narrow glens, or doughs, 

 as they are called about Halifax, takes place; probably the 

 river swollen by the autumnal rains renders the acquisition 

 of their food difficult, and consequently compels them to seek 

 it in shallow water. A bird-stuffer, with whom I was well 

 acquainted, procured in one season more than fifty specimens 

 by placing a net across the bottom of a clough, and com- 

 mencing to beat the bushes from above, which drove every 

 bird into it.' It is to be wished that he had confined 

 himself to the more sportsman-like use of 'the arrows, for 

 which 'Clym of the Clough and William of Cloudeslie' were 

 so famous, when 'merrie it was under the greenwood tree.' 



In Northumberland, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, in December, 

 18-19, and January, 1850, great numbers of the Kingfisher 

 appeared, more coming into the hands of one game-dealer 

 than he had had during the previous sixteen or eighteen 

 years. In Scotland it is much less frequent than with us. 

 One was shot near St. Andrews, in 1831. In Sutherlandshire 

 it is rare. 



