346 NATURAL HISTOEY. 



is often betrayed by their shrill pipings. The bill in the young birds is very short, and has a little 

 white tip to it; in the adult male it is entirely black; but the female may always be distinguished 

 by the base of the lower mandible being red. 



That the Kingfisher makes its own hole is now an ascertained fact, and the following note on 

 the subject was published in 1866 by Mr. G. Dawson Rowley: "Though the subject of the King- 

 fisher (Alcedo ispida) is somewhat stale, yet, in consequence of the remarks which I have just read 

 in the October Quarterly on ' Homes without Hands,' I send you the following notes, made this 

 spring, in order to set at rest, if possible, a mistake regarding the breeding of this bird. Modern 

 writers on the Kingfisher are hardly more free from error than even Ovid or Pliny. The bird is a true 

 miner, and makes a nest of fish-bones ; but, as no rule is without an exception, when it cannot find 

 a suitable bank to bore in, it has been known to nidificate in abnormal situations,,; and when abun- 

 dance of proper fish are not to be caught it is obliged to do without bones. 



" From many years' constant Avatching, I can exactly tell the probable position of the hole, and 

 the day it will be begun. Accordingly, on Thursday, March 29, I sent two witnesses to a particular 

 spot on the River Ouse, St. Neots, Huntingdonshire. They observed that there was on that day 

 positively no hole of any kind, no vestige of hole, in that bank. On Easter Monday, April 2, I sent 

 a keeper to the place. He reported the hole as begun. On the same day I went in a boat, and, 

 putting a reed up, found it by actual measurement about fifteen inches deep, the moulds being quite 

 fresh outside. Droppings of the bird (which was seen constantly leaving the hole) were visible in 

 two places. There was also a shallow hole a little to the left of the above-mentioned one. This was 

 a failure either from caprice or some other cause abandoned. We observe the same in Woodpeckers, 

 which will sometimes bore in three or four places before they get one to their liking, a circumstance 

 I particularly remarked in a pair of the Greater Spotted Woodpeckers (P. major] last spring. Between 

 March 29 and April 2 the Kingfisher had made two holes. I thought it best now to leave the place, 

 only receiving from the keeper each morning a report, as he went by in his boat, how the bird was 

 going on. 



" Saturday, April 7, I made a memorandum : ' I again observe fresh moulds, but not, as we 

 consider, to-day's, but yesterday's : hence I suppose the hole to be nearly finished, if not quite.' Here, 

 I should say, after taking these nests constantly for nearly thirty years, I find twenty-one days is the 

 correct time, from the commencement of the excavation to the end of laying seven eggs. I never had 

 the luck to find eight ; Mr. Gould, however, informs me he once did. ' Saturday, April 21. Opened 

 the hole situated in the perpendicular bank to keep off Water-rats. Found by measurement the 

 entrance was twelve inches from the surface of the ground, and about five feet from the water. The 

 length of the ascending gallery was eight inches and a half, and the oval chamber six inches in 

 diameter more. The top of the chamber was nine inches from the surface of the ground. It contained 

 the iisual nest of fish-bones, which was one inch and a half deep ; and the same, with the seven fresh 

 eggs, are now before me, with two other nests from the same locality. The bird flew off after the first 

 dig, which I commonly made so as to cover up the hole again without disturbance if the full number 

 of eggs had not been laid. There was no excrement in the chamber, but much just outside in the gallery.' 

 The size of the chamber is just sufficient for the owners to turn round pleasantly. When the young 

 birds, which I have seen in every stage, have been some time in the nest, of course the hole gets very 

 foul. Here, then, is a case, capable of being attested by two or three witnesses step by step and con- 

 cerning which there can be no doubt where the Kingfisher is proved to have made its own hole. 

 I have known it when driven from one bank by floods to revert to an old hole of its own making 

 in the previous year ; but never has there been an instance of its taking up with the abode 

 of its most deadly enemy, the Water-rat. It is hard to prove a negative, biTt it is certainly a most 

 unlikely thing for a Kingfisher to enter a rat-hole. No one who has seen the eggs of this species in 

 situ as often as I have can deny that the fish-bones are placed with the design of making 

 a nest." 



In the British Museum may be seen a nest of the Kingfisher, which was taken by Mr. Gould 

 under the following circumstances : " On the 18th of April, 1859, during one of my fishing 

 excursions on the Thames, I saw a hole in a precipitous bank, which I felt assured was the nesting- 

 place of a Kingfisher ; and on passing a spare top of my fly rod to the extremity, a distance of nearly 



